


Two Birds, Two Stones

by Shiggityshwa



Category: Farscape, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Bodyswap, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-05-03 08:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14565168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiggityshwa/pseuds/Shiggityshwa
Summary: Long-range communication devices are a tricky little thing. What would happen if the crew brought one onto Moya at the same time another passed through a Stargate to Cheyenne Mountain? Not so much body swapping as environment swapping. Established CrichtonxAeryn eventual CamxVala. Set Post-PKW and Post-AOT.





	1. Swing Your Partner

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hi all, this is my first Farscape and Stargate: SG-1 fanfic. I'd been binging both series, and I thought of the what-ifs and this happened. That being said, I'm really sorry if there's continuity errors between the story and the shows, I'm still new and may not have remembered every detail. A preemptive thank you to those who reviewed/alerted/favorited and of course read. I hope you enjoyed.

 

 

He sneaks through the door, being chased by the first scream of the day, they start off as gurgles, then grow to whistles, then amplifies like a megaphone, loud enough to cause feedback.  The sound chases his thumping boots through the hallway, as he stealthy escapes the jail cell which is his family’s room which was originally a jail cell. It wasn’t his turn. It was his turn, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to admit it. It’s always his freaking turn and he does the doting husband/father thing, reaching over the edge of the bed he and Aeryn can barely fit on—been meaning to move another bed in because married couples haven’t slept in separate rooms since Leave it to Beaver—and rocks the space bassinet. It’s almost like a normal bassinet, but since they’re in space it’s a space bassinet, which just sounds cooler, because bassinets are not cool or manly or intimidating in any way, but a space bassinet sounds like it might be armed.

His space boots—same understanding—slide over Moya’s clean, but vengefully echoing hallways and he feels the rubber treads on the soles pull and flick with the friction because he’s trying so damn hard not to make a sound. Behind him the baby cries grow louder.

It wasn’t his turn—it definitely was his turn.

Three tiers later and he swears he can still hear the baby crying, the sound wafting through Moya’s internals and haunting him. He’s probably being tracked. Aeryn—with Deke in her arms, balling his little fists and screaming, just screaming because other than poop, that’s all he does. If he just keeps quiet he might have a chance—she’s going to find him, probably pretty soon—but the quieter he is, the longer he has alone.  

A large thunk echoes down the hallway from command, which should be empty during early morning sleeping time unless he’s hiding in there trying to escape their banshee of a son. When there were more people living on Moya, it was a busier place. Bad thoughts and bad feelings. The emptiness by the command controls, and no one to ask for advice when their son hasn’t gone to sleep for more than an hour.

Peeks around the corner to find Chiana stationary, feet unmoving but her body swerving like she’s hula hooping, back hyperextending, and she purrs with pride. In them middle of the table there’s a bulky object. It wasn’t there three hours ago when he went to bed—when he went to hang off the side of his bed with his eyes wide open.

“You scanning that thing for bugs?” He doesn’t know how her new eyes work, despite her telling him more than once. He’s either been too tired from lack of sleep or too preoccupied from lack of sleep. He just wants a little sleep. He just wants to sleep alone for one night.

Half expects her to start at his voice, old Chiana would’ve, would’ve growled something about privacy and how it’s only cool when she sneaks around. Would’ve Cheshire grinned at him and danced around him, only a little too close. She doesn’t even turn back to him, doesn’t even tense her shoulders. “Do you like it?”

“Well that depends.” He slips in behind her, lowering his head and viewing the thing from just over her shoulder. “What the hell is it?”

Perches her hands on her hip, knocking his chin away form her shoulder, and half grins while studying it with approval. “Do you think Rygel will know the difference?”

 “Again, that would depend on what the hell it is.” He turns back to the doorway—can’t linger in one place too long or Aeryn will smell blood on the wind—but in the dim light, his boot soccer kicks the table. It shudders and he stumbles before catching himself, less stealth now and more rodeo clown.

“Be careful.” Chiana steadies the table and wipes a finger down the outside of the jar—is it a jar? it kind of looks like a vase. It’s round, like a big jug or a planter for an indoor palm tree and it’s plugged with a stopper made of faint blueish crystals.

“I’m sorry, did I upset that giant eyesore?” Huffs and touches the side of it, expecting cool clay underneath his fingers but instead finds a dull warmth like a water bottle, like his side of his family’s makeshift, too small bed after he fear bolts from any sound close to crying. Crichtons don’t cry. Responsibilities are vast, galaxy vast, wormhole possibility vast and the tributaries that squiggle away from his central life line, the two major life events immediate and simultaneous as a war raged—he kept running at the time but now he’s got asthma and one hell of a charley horse.

“It’s not an eyesore you greebol, it’s a new hookah.”

He drags a finger over avocado sized indents until his fingers stop over two zen stones plugged in. They’re smooth and when he scratches at them, trying to pry them out with his nails he has no luck, it looks like a camp arts and craft project that no one finished.

“Awful generous of you to buy Rygel a new hookah, Pip.”  

“I broke the old one.”

“Yeah, there it is,” chuckles because he’s kind of been raising kids for the last four and a half years. Don’t break each other’s crap, stop stealing ingots from the universal supply, crackers don’t matter.

“It—it was an accident.” Chiana swings around the table, popping out from behind the hookah that obviously isn’t a hookah—no lines for smoke to come out, only rocks and crystals—picking her footsteps like someone pulled her over for a DUI. “I just—I’ve been having dreams about—well—I just needed something to take the edge off.”

“Chiana.” Her totter stops before him, and her head tilts to the side but her cat eyes cast to the floor. He’s still not used to the eyes, still not used to a lot of things. The room only offers a few white highlights from distant stars outside and they play across her skin. Hasn’t stopped to think about how she’s handling it, been too busy mishandling everything to notice. He covers the leather-like material on her shoulder with his hand, and his pinkie taps at her ice-cold skin. He speaks close to her, profile to profile, as they always do, and it might be because somehow she reminds him  a little of Liv. “That’s what the old lady is for,” he whispers and as she opens her mouth to question him, he leans away and shouts, “Hey Grandma.”

A whimper and thump answer him from the doorway, not Noranti, not who he was expecting, but who he so quickly forgot about while starlight galaxy dancing around a not hookah.

“What the frell are you doing.”

His lovely wife, dressed in one of his gray t-shirts and Calvin’s underwear, stands with widened hips and angled legs to impede his stampede by her. Their son, their little man with his head resting on her shoulder revs his engine and screams right in her ear, skipping a breath every now and again when he runs out. It’s so loud Moya may as well be tinged blue.  

“Honey, I was just—”

“It’s your turn to heed to his undying wails.”

He flings his arms up, landing somewhere between Shakespearean and childish, and runs a hand over his night sweat clammy face because it’s getting to the point that between recovering from creating a galaxy destroying wormhole and dealing with their son’s conniptions every two arns, he’s past full-blown insomniac. “It’s always my turn.”

“Because you always declare ‘double or nothing’.”

“Crichton,” Chiana growls, her walk a dizzying arc, her hands cotton balling her ears to the various noises his family bleat. “Deal with your narl.”

“Hey,” shouts after her as she slinks by his wife and down a hallway, naturally disappearing into Moya’s shadows. “Don’t leave your trash on the table.”

Aeryn advances from the doorway, lips pressing together in a perfect line of disappointment. She speaks in a low and steady, “You will take this child and you will not return to the room until he has settled.”

“Honey—”

“If this was a full blooded Sebacean child, he would be sleeping through the night.”

“Probably because the occurrence of shaken baby syndrome with peacekeeper night nurses is really high.” Her reaction isn’t what he hoped for, which is anything but the heavy-lidded glower she entered the room with. Since it became a necessity to be completely silent in the few precious moments while their son is asleep, they’ve been having more nonverbal fights, and he always loses those too. The grade school staring contest it reverts to throws him a loss because her composure is too good, her composure is scary as all hell and he think he’ll always lose because he loves her a little bit more

Without a word, without straying from her eyes—hardened by hanging off the other side of the too small bed—he uncrosses his arms and waves for their wailing son. “I thought Peacekeepers only needed three hours of sleep a night.”

“Your son—” her arms are cold as they brush against the tops of his, she shifts, black hair falling forward like a protective curtain and the tension in her muscles leaves when he cradles their son. “—makes me need more.”

“Our son.” He holds Deke the same way she does, head to shoulder. The little guy is always so warm, and it scares him. Babies and fevers. A half human baby in the depths of uncharted space with a space cold. The human and Sebacean parts of him fighting for dominance and cooling rods drilled into the soft spot on his little head.

He leans against the top of the table, careful not to drop the baby or the hookah and waits for Aeryn to leave so he and Deke can continue the dialogue they’ve been having since he was born. How Crichtons don’t cry that much or for very long and Deke’s newborn old man face turns red as he cries to spite him. Instead she balances beside him, her hand clasping the edge of the table, thumb touches his pinkie until he slides it away.

Aeryn sighs, because this is a battle they’ve been having for the last almost month. Responsibility. Does he have to change diapers? Does he have to do midnight feedings? The fact that Aeryn can’t breastfeed and has never even heard of breastfeeding doesn’t quiet help. Finding Sebacean baby chow in uncharted space is becoming more difficult—to find and explain—can’t exactly go around and parade their ex-peacekeeper and human wormhole weapons product of love. It’s a weird thing, love, he loves them both, but he’s fed up with them both so quickly now, spent the first week of their son’s life comatose and hasn’t really picked up slack since then, and he wonders why and doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Does this get easier, John?” Her voice now soft but identifiable over the weakening whimpers of their son, they all share the same weary face, the same skin brushed with gray sleeplessness and sudden rousing.  She tucks her hands between her thighs and the Calvin’s run up a bit on her pale legs. He’s married to her, which is beautiful and all he’s ever wanted while terrifying to no end. Where to go now, the edge of the universe, stare into the nothingness and welcome the madness. “If you tell me it gets easier, than it will be worth it.”

Everything he’s ever wanted is in his arms as he sits beside everything else he’s ever wanted. The thing is it happened to fast. They were gone and then back and eight days later—double the gestation period for any regular Peacekeeper as Aeryn keeps pointing out—they had a baby in the middle of Custard’s last freaking stand. He made a wormhole weapon and it was more exciting that anything happening right now. He was terrified but at least he was awake. “I don’t know, Aeryn.”

Her eyebrows crease and he figures she’ll slide closer, place a hand on his knee and give him those red hot tinglies that ended up giving them a son. But she doesn’t. Her hands clamp together and sit in her lap playing possum. Their eyes meet in the white highlights and hers shimmer with a layer of tears, her eyebrows slant to cut through the vulnerability. “John, if you don’t—”

The not hookah on the table glows like her hands clapped it on, and Deke falls silent for the first time since yesterday. Tiny balled fists relaxing into openhand high fives. Steadies their son’s heavy body on the table, propping him up with his hand and in the bask of the hookah’s luminescence, he falls asleep.

“Well now, all he needed was a nightlight,” he whispers, lips pulling into a grin, forgetting what he was just thinking, what Aeryn was about to ask him, chock one up to insomnia, boys. Despite the victory, a rueful grin still graces her face, half assed and barely meeting the corner of her mouth, she hasn’t forgotten. “Aeryn, look, I—"

There’s a rough metal clank as the two zen stones from earlier—buddah bribes or koi pond decos—tumble from where the last of the glue has finally space dissolved. The clack of stone to the metal tabletop and the immediate dispersal of the warm blue glow causes tiny baby eyes to blink back open. They’re not his eyes but probably see better than twenty-twenty. Tiny hands roll into dictatorish fists that begin their mechanized rotations through the air. A red, toothless, gum filfed mouth opens wide and the wailing returns.

“What did you do?” Aeryn is on her feet collecting the zen stones flipping them around in her hand. “What did you do?”

“You were looking right at me? What did I do?” he shouts and grabs a stone from her hand, flipping it around until it looks like he thinks it did while stuck in the hookah. “Just put them back.”

“How?”

“Do we have any glue?”

“What’s glue?”

“How do you not know what glue is. You’ve been to Earth.” He shifts his weight and get an earful of screaming right down his canal that gives him and instant headache and may actually tinge everything in blue. But it is better than getting thrown up on, he’s always getting thrown up on now.

“Look,” she halts him with a hand to his chest, his lips tucked into each other, his body bouncing Deke. She leans forward to place the stone in the same location. “Maybe they’re magnetized.”  

“Yeah, sure, magnetic stones.” He rolls his eyes and does the same and suddenly the white highlights devour them both.

* * *

 

He watches from the control deck as the Stargate bursts to life and collapses back in on itself. Two soldiers exit the blue gap. Walk side-by-side, each with an arm slung under a device, a familiar looking device and he wants to groan. Long-range communication device. Wishes Jackson came up with a better name. Something shorter. He hates this thing.

“Uh-uh, take it back.”

Vala appears on the transport deck despite this being an after-hours mission with a very high security clearance. She crosses her arms at the mouth of the hallway and keeps her distance from the soldiers. Or probably the device. “We are not dealing with this thing again.”

Fully groans now. Loud and unprofessional. Snatches his clipboard from the console and bounds down the stairs to intercept her false claim to any hierarchical power. She’s part of the team. Sure. But she doesn’t have a rank. She’s almost the plucky sidekick.

“Vala, get out of their way.” He startles her, and she jumps to the side, back flat against the high walls giving just enough room for the soldiers to continue their trek.

Intercepts just as she reaches to call them back. Her hailing hand smacks against his chest and when she sidesteps him, he follows. She shoves at his shoulder, but the force barely sways him. “Are you really allowing them to just bring this thing back.?”

“It’s not the same one—”

“It doesn’t matter, they’re all dangerous.”

“It’s not nearly as dangerous as—”

“Yes, of course, I forgot it wasn’t you who was burned alive.” Her body twists away and she paces in a wide circle, stopping before him to raise two fingers. “Twice.”

“No, I’m just one of the lucky people who get to hear the very specific details of the story when you retell it every other day.” He immediately regrets his words. Can’t imagine the emotions she went through, the immense pain, all the underlying trauma that’s still probably present. Hell, he still has nightmares about a certain plane crash. “Look, the device is missing the stones, so there is no way we can interact with people galaxies away. It’s spending the night at the base and heading to area 51 tomorrow morning.”

Turns on his heel, leaving the newly waxed floor scuffless, and rounds the corner in not quite a march but a fast gait. Paperwork for the device needs to be finished by 0600, along with the transit slip and all the customs reports. If he starts now he should have enough time to go for a quick jog before—

“This is an omen, you know.”

He groans again. Louder. A clipboard and a textbook worth of paper hiding his face from her skipping along beside him. The serious bristled faces of recruits and seasoned veterans watch her pigtails bounce with each jaunty step. Sometimes their nostrils flare or a sneer washes over their lips, sometimes he does it too. “Vala, I promise you nothing is an omen.”

“A device missing the stones seems like an obvious set up.”

Has a strong gait now, not the jog he wants, but she starts to straggle and maybe he can lose her in the late-night snack rush and lock her out of the lab. It’ll never happen. She’ll end up sitting in there with him, all because of Jackson.

She squeezes between two recruits both taller and wider than him and utters, “oop, excuse me gentlemen.”  

“Are you suggesting the immobile device with no energy reading is going to radiate and explode.”

“No, I’m suggesting that someone might have intentionally removed the stones in order to cause us harm.” She is valuable in that no one else on SG-1 has her skillset. Every few months she’ll have a really good idea. A life saving idea. A revelation usually counteracted by an immediate bad idea erasing the good. A Supergate sacrifice for an Ori immaculate conception. He’s been trying to hear her out more and more, but her naivety and playful attitude can wear thin in times of panic, in times of open fire and duck and dodge.

So, he fakes her out around the next corner, turns down a hallway and then doubles back. It reminds him of playing tag in the cornfields growing up. Dusty earth and a hot sun ringing over him until his mom called him for lemonade. It makes him smile. She scrambles in front of him, walking backwards and still speaking. He leaves his smile on too long, she notices and copies it with a genuine grin of her own.

He blinks his way back to Cheyenne Mountain, the twisting narrow pathways, and the retreating woman in front of him paying no attention to her footfalls. Jackson’s method of dodging and ignoring isn’t working anymore. “Who wants to hurt us?”

“Who doesn’t want to hurt us?” Her foot catches in a raise in the tiles and her expression falls blank as she slips backwards. Automatically, his arms shoot out, hands clamping down onto her shoulders, reeling her backwards and releasing her away from the stairs. Her pigtails bounce the entire time and she grins, not paying any attention to the near tumble down a flight of twenty metal stairs.

“Vala, look.” She grins wider at him and he purses his lips and taps his clipboard. “I have to transfer the device first thing in the morning. It’s not going to do anything when it’s here. It’s inactive, they found it in a garbage dump on some abandoned planet.”

“Then why doesn’t Daniel have a look at it?”

“You know Jackson has that conference.” Jackson spent the better part of a week writing up speeches and slideshow presentations on the dangers of the Ori and how monitoring stargate traffic can essentially cut down on planetary threats. He would have winged it the night before. Glued some pictures on poster board and be in bed after a nice jog. But education isn’t the call for the conference, funding is. “If he can convince them to give us a little more funding, the Stargate will be better monitored, and these long-range communication devices will stop popping up.”

“So. we aren’t even—”

“We aren’t doing anything, it’s a simple tag and transfer.” His stern walk takes him through the outer lab where he nods at the officer guarding the experimentation room. He inputs the code at the door and feels her shadowing him still.

The door whooshes open and a sterile smell curls it’s way into his lungs, not like antiseptic or any distinguishable smell, just the lack of one. No smells at all. The white room gleams under the strength of several lights and he blinks to rid himself of the snow blindness.

Her combat boots echo behind him. Clicking to his clunks, creating a shared melody between them.  “Well that’s good, because I’m not going.”

“Great.” He stops at the device, the blue crystal atop of it hazy and dull, brown lines of dirt and debris working their way through the crags on the outside. The metal body is tarnished with age and the once awkward scent of nothing is replaced with the lingering odour of a secondary planet’s dump. He glances over his shoulder and she’s dark green and black popping in an all white room. “Wait, going where?”

“To search for the stones.”

“No one is going to search for the stones.”

“Well not now.”

This is one of those times where he’s going to ignore her. He has a mission, get object A from location A to location B by 0600. She doesn’t have a mission. She has loneliness. He locks the device in place rendering it unworkable. There’s a high-pitched squeak and then the low hum of an emp field encircling and blocking all transmissions. “There, you can sleep safe.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“There’s a surprise.” Checks his watch. Almost 0030. A jog is out of the question, but he can still get a decent amount of sleep if he uses his base bunk, but that’s on the other side of the complex. Maybe he can just sleep in his office. He brushes by her and feels his movement pull her with him.

“It’s just that—” She trails after him through the corridor. The click of her boots more frequently tempoed like the metronome on the old piano his grandma made him practice on. “Well all of you get to go home, to a different home, outside here, and I’m—” She breathes in deeply. Faltering then regaining, then falling back again. Never once does she ask him to slow down and talk to her face-to-face. He would never pull this with Sam, or Teal’c. He might try to dodge Jackson for fun, but after his evasiveness became apparent, he would slow, and they would have the conversation. Half of his conversations with Vala he never sees her face, her reaction, or is even facing her. It bothers him because he doesn’t know what this means. Disrespect, or him picking up on her playfulness, or does she just assume this is how half of their conversations will go now, with her chasing him, because he’s done it for so long it seems ordinary.

“So, you understand then?”

He hasn’t been listening because he’s two feet in front of her and her voice has sunken between army boots and drive-by dialogues. It’s disrespectful and he feels a little guilty because she does get those valiant life-saving ideas and for a brief amount of time she is a hero. He turns and she’s almost slams into him.

“Sure?”

“Oh excellent.” She claps and beams and for a moment it’s endearing before he remembers how dangerous her excitement can be. “So where shall we look first?”

“For what?”

“For the stones.”

“Vala, we are not going searching for the stones.”

“But it’s been a week since I’ve left this building and I’m starting to go mad. Since Daniel and Samantha are preoccupied it would be a great way to pass the time.”

“Look, I’m sorry that down time bores you, and that you’re confined to command when you don’t have the proper supervision.” His hands swing a bit as he spins around her and continues towards his office. His empty hands. “We don’t need the stones, the paperwork for the transfer—” is on the desk beside the device, miles away from his office where he can catch a quick sleep.

“Dammit.” Pivots again on his heel and switches directions back towards the lab. Maybe she doesn’t question their tag conversations because he’s always backtracking. “Look, the stones won’t—” but she’s not tracking him anymore. He lost her or she gave up and went back to her dorm or the kitchen as part of the late-night snack crowd.

Guilty but not guilty. Maybe he should talk to Jackson about this. Anything caged long enough is bound to go a little stir crazy, like the fireflies he’d collect in jars and his grandma would benevolently release. Giving Vala duties or training when they’re grounded for more than a few days could be beneficial. She could take advanced combat courses, learn to fight in different ways instead of depending on luck and surpr—

 “Would you rather someone else get a hold of the stones and use them to transfer right into our bodies?”

“Jesus, Vala.” She pops out before the lab door, and follows as he walks the same route by objects of interest and chemistry sets he wouldn’t know how to use even after hours of training. Maybe they should all be cross trained a bit. She sighs loud enough behind him to draw his attention. “Our bodies are fine, Vala.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you’ve never had to experience it.”

“So what?” Types in the password on the touch pad again and it sparks up as red until the buttons reset. “You want to go out and find all fifteen stones?”

“No, only the two that work in our device.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Enters the code again and it flashes as red. The guard next to the door gives him the eye and he twitches his lips into an awkward smile.

“Well that planet’s dump would be a good place to start.”

Presses enter and the pad lights up green. The door whooshes open and the familiar unfamiliar stench of nothing greets him again. Everything in the room still shines. The clipboard stands almost black stroke outlined on the metallic table. “Well, that’s not going to work because this isn’t our device.”

“Not our.” She flicks her hand between them, then widens and twists to gesture to the whole complex. “Our.”

“It’s neither. It belongs to Area 51 where it will go and stay and be deactivated.” He completes the final signature on the triplicate form. Beside him the air smells almost burnt, it’s unusual but the mission log did state the device was found under at least ten years of trash. Maybe the stench of a dump fire lingered.

“Well then when we get thrust into other people’s bodies it will be entirely your fault.”

In his peripherals he watches her raise an eyebrow and set her jaw in challenge, which doesn’t mean anything because she’s the sidekick. The one who takes people down by tripping them or names an ancient dragon Daryl.  

“Vala.” She’s closer to him now and he inadvertently tries to take a step back but knocks the table and his clipboard. The hum of the emp field increases behind him. In the extreme light of the room her blue eyes vibrate. She is hopeful, but also scheming. Half of him, the half that won’t meet her eyes when they talk, still doesn’t trust her. “I will never be leaving the comfort of my own body, okay?”

The emp field increases in rate again and the hairs on his arms begin to stand on end, her pigtails frizz up and there’s a small crackle of static. The sullen crystal in the middle of the device bursts to life.

“Aw shi—”

And a white light encompasses the room.


	2. Behind You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you to everyone who took the time to read/favorite/review. I'm glad the story hopefully entertained you in some way  
> Again I will reiterate that I am new to both fandoms. So continuity errors are not intentional, rather ignorant

Two Birds, Two Stones

Chapter 2

Behind You 

She’s immediately aware something is different. First the air, not as clear and constant as on Moya. Thicker, stewish, and heavy with humidity lapping her face. The temperature is a few klances higher, not dangerously so, tolerable, but not ideal. Her vision clears away to offer up an incandescent room contradictory to Moya’s dark and welcoming interior. The intensity dries her eyes and adds a ring of blindness to her peripherals.

One hand fixes to a table, not as weighty as the command table but sturdier, cooler to the touch. Employs her auxiliary senses to create an area map in her brain. Table to the left and a table in front with that frelling device on it—a beacon? From who? A lot like shifting bodies, she has her hands though, still wears Calvin’s, white reflecting the light. White like a Peacekeeper medical unit, but she was in command and that glowing blue crystal, John and Deke—

“John.” Uprights herself, eyelids gradual in opening, adapting to an overflow of white. Steps forward and something clatters to the ground, startling her to a stop. The second call is throatier, more desperate, “John.”

Objects stabilize in her sight, a metallic table, some papers on the ground. That thing blinking blueness slowly to the tune of a high-pitched hum before faltering out. A dark blur constructs itself beside her, grows until he’s on his feet, hand rubbing at the back of his head. “I’m okay, Honey.”

Vision healing, she traces his hand to his neck blanketing it with hers, allows him leech some of her remaining coolness. He retrieves her hand and brings the palm to his mouth. “Are you okay.”

Plays her free fingertips over the hair behind his ear. “Yes, I’m adjusting to the light.” Doesn’t mention the temperature which is not presently an issue.

“Why is it so bright in here?” Squints as he examines the room in a weak circle, his nose pulls as he inhales in deep snorts of the air, she doesn’t know what he’s doing, but it certainly isn’t analyzing the humidity. “Why does it smell like a hospital?”

“Deke.” Grabs the table and pushes it away from the wall, but there aren’t even dust motes behind it. Pushes John out of the way into the space she just created and rocks the device on the table in search.

“Aeryn, we had him inoculated. Remember how much the damn Diagnosian cost?”

“You fekkik.” Shoves him so he stumbles back against the wall. Not as hard as she could, they both know it.

“Hey.”

“Where is my frelling son?”

“Our son is—” anger floods from his face and it relaxes, then immediately tenses. “Oh shit.”

“Where is he?” Scrambles around the small chamber, reinforced walls around three quadrants and a panel for viewing behind them. No sign of her son. She leaned against the table beside John, and he pulled away his hand, they spoke briefly but the baby quieted, enthralled by the glow.

John lands beside her on his hands and knees, cheek planted to the ground to better scan with his deficient eyes among many other deficient factions of his body. “Maybe he didn’t get transported with us.”

Bursts to her feet, allowing another spin to take in the chamber again. The pulse of the device continues in pace and in pitch still matched by the blinking crystals. “Pilot? Chiana? Can anyone hear—”

“Hey.” Again reassembles beside her, more composed, more still. How can he be so frelling lax? His hands find her shoulders and rub, the friction only serving to increase her core temperature. “Calm down.”

“Do not tell me to calm down like I’m some frelling hysteric.”

“It’s okay.”

Flips her entire body so their faces almost touch, he smells of adrenaline and the odor of sweat. He doesn’t blink, instead holds her nonverbal spar. “Do. Not. Placate. Me.”

“Okay.” His lips purse to hold in words he wants to discharge but concedes to her. Presses his back to the wall, wrinkling his black shirt and keeps his arms raised in surrender. “You do your thing, Baby.”

Can’t be still. Can’t stand—legs pump and she tucks her face into fidgeting fingers. Her son is helpless, undeveloped body and brain incapable of defending himself. Created from love—perhaps lust or the need to lower fluid levels before the incarnation of love, but eventual love, and he does not deserve to be abandoned by both parents as she was.

“Pilot? Pip? Grandma? Anyone?” Back flush against the wall, he coms for those who might answer, irises tracing her marching movements. Tries for a full micron or two for contact before sighing, then catches her hand mid stride and she spins to him with a set jaw and a clenched fist. He only holds her hand, thumb ringing over the back, and drops his head.

“Are you two okay?”  A woman enters the room before either of them notice, she’s dressed what looks like military fatigues with flipping blonde hair and sparkling eyes. She also has a board like the one toppled to the floor.  She waits at inattention for them to answer her question, and when neither of them speaks, she shifts her head with elaborations. “Monitoring room recorded a flash from the device and—why are you guys dressed like that?”

She bends her knees, fingers filtering over the fallen board on the ground and without hesitation fires it through the air to hit the woman in the face. Distracted, the woman teeters back, allowing full access to her pulse pistol easily snatched from a holster on her upper thigh. It’s not a pulse pistol, but a gun of some sort, the schematics of most are easy enough to follow. Behind her, John constricts in surprise or perhaps disagreement. His hands still halfway in the air.

“Where is my child?”

“Aeryn maybe we should—”

The woman touches the small incision on her temple and lets out a hiss, which is ridiculous as it’s hardly bleeding. “Vala, what—”

“Where is my frelling son.”

“Our son, Honey,” John slips by her, heat waves following his course to mediate between her and the woman. “Our son.”

“I will ask you once more, and then I will shoot.”

 “Vala.” The woman’s hand falls from her eye as she straightens her stance. “you don’t have a son.”

“Look we just showed up here. Her name’s not—” John’s body sparks forward, hand clamping down on the woman’s bicep terrifying her. “Are you speaking English?”

“Umm, yes?” she clarifies with a nervous smile pulling the ends of her lips wide.

“Aeryn lower your weapon.”

“John—”

“She’s speaking English. We’re on Earth.”

Exhaustion complete in her being. The wakeful arns spent at night fixing her body rigid as to not fall off the shared bed only to be constantly disturbed by the wails of her son whom she cannot satiate. Who is never content. Chasing after John, somnambulant down lightless and abandoned Moya corridors, so he will hold and care for the baby who slips like liquid between his fingers. “Deke.”

“Aeryn.” Sounds like a chide, however she will not include it as a chide as then she would have to shoot him, should over his shoulder, a warning shot because someone has to put Deke’s needs first, the emotional turmoil of missing parents, of a missing child and she bites the inside of her mouth to keep from evacuating in tears and a rant which will turn physical.

“I don’t think we want to shoot her if she can help.” He shifts back to her, chin on her shoulder, nose pressing her cheek, his voice a teetering whisper, words smoking into her ear. Hands singe on her biceps, coercing her into lowering the gun, and she hesitates because her son sometimes stares up at her with her eyes and she doesn’t know what to do because they’re so despondent. More pressure exerts on her arm and she shakes to keep stationary, but breaks under his control, directing the gun away from the woman’s head. They all heave in at a rate increasing the humidity, a sliver increase in temperature and she cocks an eyebrow at this realization and slows her breathes.

“You’re not Colonel Mitchell then?”

“No.”

“Then why did you take over his body?”

“Hey, I didn’t hijack anything.” Floats his hands over his sweatpants, and his t-shirt stained with baby vomit down the back. Burped wrong and immediately returned to her, the disapproving mewls of an infant still wrapped in a war stained blanket. “This is my body. If you don’t believe me, ask her.”  

“You’re not Vala?” The attention falls to her and it shouldn’t. An improperly sized bed to fit a family. Sometimes when he flees, she retrieves her son and holds to her chest allowing him to cry until his throat dries. Pats his stiff back and speaks to him in Sebacean.

“Lady, she isn’t even human.”

The viewing portal behind her flashes open allowing a rotund man, dressed in an Earth military uniform, entrance to their stand off. He is accompanied by two soldiers, both of whom are armed with rifles, not pistols. His face is weary because it must be the middle of their sleep cycle, glassy eyes loop the room. Squints when analyzing John and herself. Perhaps as the woman mentioned earlier, their attire is inappropriate for their environment. Halts at the woman, and her hand shifts from her body to warn him not to cross into their territory. He addresses her curtly, “Colonel Carter, what is going on.”  

“Sir, this is not Vala or Cam.”

“What do you mean.” His voice is the gravelly equivalent of dragging a hand over his face.  

“The device briefly flashed which set off radiation peaks in the lab. I came to—”

“Whoa, radiation? I don’t have a good record with radiation. Tell ‘em, Baby.” John withdraws from the new humans, back turned, pistol swinging in his hand with his momentum, the military man takes notice, his eyebrow twitching into an almost full arch and the woman nods her head.

Wants to remind him over his childlike glee from returning to Earth that the baby is still missing, lay her forehead against the square of his shoulder in lethargy and repeat that he has a child they should be caring for and not grind her teeth when he responds with a guttural groan. Then the hollow sound of impact as the side of her forearm slams into the side of his head. The swirls of emotions, of worry and rage, boiling within her and her failure to ward sentiment from her speech and expression. Her turmoil palpable and manipulating in her words, “Where is my child.”

“Aeryn he’s our son.” Frustration in his constant reminder to share their offspring. Frustration in her constant reminder that it is his offspring despite earlier doubts. Earth television programs from their last landing, Chiana and herself graduating from children’s entertainment to soap operas or as John dubbed them ‘a lonely housewife’s daily entertainment’. Sitting on pliable pieces of furniture while eating foods full of sugar, fat, and salt, and becoming completely absorbed into someone else’s life. It’s her life now. Her life.

At her stoic expression, one he can now translate, his voice softens as to alleviate the blame, “and he’s not here.”

“How do you know this, Crichton?” John is a pet name akin to all the hypocoristics he tosses into their dialogue to appease her but only work to soothe him with familiar Earth idiosyncrasies. “You woke after I did, and I could not see.”

“I can only imagine what it must feel like to lose a child.” The woman, Colonel Carter, stretches her hand forward across the one table strewn aside in her earlier panic. Her voice continues steady giving her words underlying sincerity, “We can try to help you find him, if you’ll work with us.”

“We didn’t misplace him, we were transported here.”

“I was holding him.” Head down in admittance. The weapon hangs at his side and she’s not confused or surprised by his breeching loyalty. Their love so concrete then quickly buried in a recovery period. Supine on that bed for an entire week and for an entire week she tried to rouse him. Spoke with him equally in his comatose state, held entire two-sided conversations until the pressure of being a mother, the pressure of being a good partner ground her down. “Is there anyway to see if he came through with us?”

“We do have recordings of the room and we’ll gladly show you.”

“But?”

“But afterward we’d like your help in figuring out why you came here and where our people are.”

“Great, see, Honey, they’re—” Captured with his arm over her shoulders, heavy and warm, heavy and warm and difficult to maneuver. Muscles harden against his lax arm. Lax until it hovers away. “Not placating. I’m not.”

The unanimous motion to disperse is halted by the military man who remains locked in place as a hurdle before the exit. “You also need to return that gun to Colonel Carter.”

“I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

An argument breaks out as suspected. Safety versus customs. Impolite to be walking around a military base carrying a Lieutenant Colonel’s holster pistol. Unsure and unwelcoming, with half slotted eyes all directed at her because she’s stopped talking because standing is exercise, this chamber is infuriating, her partner vacillates between giddiness of Earth and parental duties. She grows wistful for an arn ago when she sensed him fumbling away, Deke’s cries amplified, and she cradled him, her hand over his back feeling the tick of each heartbeat.

They no longer acquire the gun, in the halos of blur still present after mass blinks, John hands the gun, barrel down, back to Colonel Carter. They are now unarmed on a military base, and the remembrance of memories not her own but acted by her; their sedation, Rygel’s evisceration, D’Argo’s transfer, and the sound of rain against glass as blankets became too heavy with sweat. She is starting to sweat.

“Good, follow me and I’ll take you to the security room.”

The doors open with a gust of synthetic air, dry and heavy on her face and Colonel Carter leads them into the adjacent room with large tables covered in items like a bizarre or trading post. They weave through aisles, and John’s fingers twitch with the need to disrupt.

“Hey, are we you’re first aliens?” Questions over his shoulder, his voice muffled by his shirt.

The General clears his throat behind her and Colonel Carter sends a brief glance over her shoulder. “I was under the impression that you were human.”

“I am, but I don’t think this is the same—” The tirade on multiple dimensions continues and he asks basic questions about his Earth to rule out similarities. 

She, however, remains wary. People—Human, Sebacean—of any species are hardly altruistic without personal gain. The soldiers remain at the entrance to the monitoring room, a gallery overlooking the various areas for experimentation. Their chamber holds the device they placed the rocks in, another holds what looks like an ancient chest made of stone, and the third is empty and being cleaned by two men in white suits, the same who abducted her in not her memories.

Colonel Carter leans over a chair and drags a piece of hardware attached to a small screen. Icons and pictures blink through until a film of the device chamber begins. There is no color, and no sound and this system is more outdated than the television she learned the alphabet from. White symbols scroll by in the corner, but the picture remains stagnant. Then the screen flashes white, and she and John fall from the ceiling. She lands on one knee with the other bent, her hand shading her eyes. John lands face down into solid flooring.

“No baby makes three,” John mutters as Colonel Carter drags the hardware around once more and restarts the film. Only they fall from the ceiling.  

“No baby.” The words are empty and mimicked only so she can gain meaning from them. Her son is on Moya, which is not as reassuring to her as John. His hand reaches back from where he leans over the console, his face close to the small screen, and she allows him to grip hers and pull her closer. In silence her head falls to his shoulder for comfort, for the miniscule amount of safety he provides.

The symbols at the bottom of the screen scroll and reroll as the movie plays again and John places a finger to them. “Wait, is it 2009?” 

“Yes.”

“We’re in the future, Babe. Do we have flying cars—”

The sound alerts her too late, and a current of electricity flows through her, dragging into her unconsciousness.

* * *

 

One of those horrid devices sits beeping on an immense table that is doing nothing to work with the design of the room. A spacious window lays just beyond showcasing a vast expanse of, well, space. No planets she can distinguish but plenty of stars, white shiny bobbles floating around in liquid black nothingness, enticing because she’s never been this close. Is it dangerous to be this close?

“Do not touch that.” Cameron’s up. He slaps a hand to the ground and then another until he pulls himself onto his hands and knees like some barnyard animal, probably a well associated one that he grew up with. Upon their transport here, he was knocked immediately unconscious, she never lost consciousness, simply picked up where she left off.

After swiping some interdimensional dust from her slacks, she tried to stir him, shook his broad shoulders and may have given him a quick slap. When his eyes didn’t flutter she checked his pulse and turned him—rather, kicked him—into a more comfortable position from where he was face down on the floor. He was entirely unconscious making his thick body difficult to manipulate.

She then took in the room, several consoles with letters in a dialect she has never seen, at least not in any of Daniel’s books. A camera would come in handy now, not just to feed Daniel’s linguistic addiction but also to snap shots of Cameron in funny poses as he slept. It would need a flash because the room is terribly dark and identifying that the unknown symbols were unknown was a great victory. Other than consoles that prove useless, a table with the device and a large window she’s found nothing of interest. No weapons, and nothing to divulge details of where they are.

“I didn’t do anything,” clarifies to him and proffers a hand, however, his head still faces the floor, so she pokes her pinkie in his ear once and then twice before he slaps her hand from the air like an unwanted insect.

“Where are we?” Spoken to the gritty tile, his head hanging like he’s doing a yogurt position. Head hanging hog or some other nonsense. Samantha invited her to a class under the ruse that the stances increased flexibility which is a good trait to have in and out of the bedroom, but it turned out to just be exercise.

“I warned that the device was dangerous.”

“I know.”

“I warned you it was dangerous while it was transporting us.”

“Are you going to keep saying ‘I told you so’ or are you going to do something to actually help.” He slobbers down his chin and onto the ground with his sentence. Not surprising or detesting, they’ve all had bad reactions to stimuli or atmospheric variances. One jump raised Muscles’ voice by at least seven octaves, another caused Daniel to urinate so frequently they had to cancel and reschedule, she still thinks it was a sexually transmitted disease.  

“I never said those words.” Steps in front of him and offers up the same hand careful not to douse it in the waterfall at his mouth. Tilts his chin to check his eyes, unsure of search parameters, but finds them still a bit wonko, floaty and bobbled like the stars out their front window.

“Vala—” grunts as he retrieves her hand from his face and borrows some of her keen balance to stand. “Wait a minute, you’re you.”

“Good perception, at least your eyes work.” Glances down at the clothes they enforced on her after the first few days. Pilfered her leather outfits while she recovered in a hospital bed. When she was cleared to exit the medical bay, Daniel approached her with a pile of clothes that turned out to be four black shirts in various cuts, two pairs of army slacks that are still too big for her, and a curious white plastic bag tied shut tightly.

_“While I always appreciate a good love token, I came with my own clothes, Darling.”_

_“You might be more comfortable in these.”_

_“Aesthetic is not about comfort.”_

_“We’d be more comfortable if you wore these.” He then pushed the clothing into her arms with a final huff._

_“What’s this?” Opened the bag, while he stammered not to open it in his presence, to find it full of undergarments. Nude colored and plain white cotton_. “ _Oh Daniel, your tastes are so pedestrian.”_

_“Sam picked those up for you,” he yelled on his way out the door, the back of his neck growing red._

“No Vala,” he grunts. He and Daniel do a lot of grunting and groaning and excreting heavy blows of hot air from their nostrils and mouths. They are the loudest breathers she’s ever known. “That means we didn’t take over anyone else’s bodies.”

“No, of course not, we merely switched environments.” Twirls around him a bit, feet in combat boots, which were also issued to her, clip clopping over the uneven flooring. He pauses movement, standing with a bit of an open mouth taking in the room. A device and a window and some new gibberish. After it becomes quite clear his rebuttal doesn’t exist she continues, “which means that there’s likely someone back at Cheyenne Mountain in our place.”

Crosses his arms over his chest either guarding himself, or from being short with her. However, he’s wearing that magnetic grin, the one that she knows bring an adventure. “How are you so calm with all of this?”

“This is my third ride, Darling.”

“So you’ve mentioned.”

 “I’ve been investigating the whole time you’ve been taking a lovely cat nap.”

“Alright Dick Tracy, what’d you learn?” Leans against he table which immediately wobbles underneath his weight.

“Well for one, I wouldn’t lean against that table, it’s made from something organic and is terribly unsturdy.”

Arms crossed again but he removes his smile and accompanies it with a step forward. “Where are we, Vala?”

“We’re obviously on a ship.” She flashes a grin hoping to appease his sudden bad attitude. Surely, he cannot blame her for this situation. She verbally alerted him several times to the dangers the device accrues. When the smile doesn’t work, when he still advances, she takes a step in retreat.

He steps. “Okay, in what galaxy?

“I don’t know.” She retreats.

“What make of ship?” He steps.

She retreats. “I don’t know.” Her back now pressed to the wall next to the bowed window with an opposite view of the room, and she notices it. Laying unmoving on the other side of that dreadful table, hidden from view behind the device.

She’s so distracted that she doesn’t realize how close he’s gotten to her, pinned her a bit against the wall. No bad memories with Cameron—alright a few—what she aptly named the Merlin speech still frightens her, the intensity and he refusal to allow her escape, shook her until she fell into place and she felt alone. Not just then, but in her dorm that night while everyone returned off base to their homes. And every night since. Wakes from memories, nightmares, and tries to stick onto whomever she can find.

He growls, “Do you know anything that can actually help?”

Before she can answer, the infant answers for her, clicking on like a clock radio and screaming murder. Swathed tightly in a stained brown blanket that exposes only a tiny red face. She raises her eyebrow at Cameron’s complete lack of expression, he’s too shocked to look shocked. “I know what that is”

He smacks his lips at her, and she grins widely before he turns towards the infant. “Hey little guy, what are you doing here?”

“Awfully macho of you to assume it’s a boy.” She stalks the other way as Cameron, unheeding of her warning, leans back against the loose table, taking the child in his arms. The face has the distinct quality of being human, creases for eyes, and a nose, and lips. Just a face full of grouchy creases. It gurgles, its throat caught on air from incessant wailing. “He looks human.”

“He does, doesn’t he.” Cameron folds back the top of the blanket, and little fingers find their way into a gummy mouth as she tiptoes up beside to garner a closer look. His eyes dart to meet hers and then back to the baby. Then he laughs, heartily laughs and it may be more surprising than finding a human infant onboard the darkest ship in the galaxy.

She laughs back, more of a mocking snicker and then pats his shoulder as she retreats again. “Well put it back.”

“What?”

“Put it back where you found it.”

“Why”

“Because that is not your child,” truly laughs now at the twist of the situation and the knowledge that SG-1’s fearless leader melts at the sight of a squalling infant. “Cameron, you found it on the table, it’s just some random baby.”

Jumps to his feet as the table teeters but doesn’t topple over yet, still holding the child, his arm raised a few inches higher as if to protect it from her harsh words. He glances left, then right. “Where do you want me to put the kid? There’s no crib or bassinet.”

Calmly, she approaches again. The cat and mouse game, the tag they play. Him running away from her down the snaking corridors of the complex, her scrambling up and over partitions and jumping half level stairs to beat him to his destination. “It was on the table; its parents will retrieve it from the table.”

“We could go find his parents.”

“That’s not our job, our job is to get home.”

“I’m not leaving this kid on a random table.”

“Why not? It is a random baby.”

“This table isn’t steady, something else you’ve also said a thousand times.” He quakes the table and the device dances, her breath gets caught somewhere between her lungs and nose. “He could roll off.”

The baby fusses, hands and feet now broken free from the confines of a very stained blanket, which doesn’t make sense and usually she’s in favor of the nonsensical as it brightens up a slow work week, but there is no way she’s slogging along some random baby on their quest to get home. “Its immobile, Cameron. Its not just going to be rolling about. It can barely support its own head.”

“Why don’t you care? You had one of these didn’t you?” The inflection in his voice hurts more than his actual candor, the insinuation that she ever got to be a mother instead of an incubator, instead of a trojan horse for troops to simply spill out of.

Pulls a strong face because her eyes feel very dry, then very wet. Doesn’t want to think of when the Ori yanked Adria out of her and stole her away. The baby that kept her up each night with tortuous heartburn and violent nightmares. Burning ceilings and walls and skin. Her skin. “Yes. Briefly. And when they took her from me I became awfully upset, so let’s not upset the parents because they might not be as nice as I am.”

“Okay. Okay.” Calms her with a halting hand, the end of her rant the end to his judgements. The baby stirs more frequently now, and Cameron bounces on his knees as if a song is playing that she can’t hear. “Let’s just try to figure out where we are and why we’re here.”

“We’re on a ship and we’re here because of the device.” Remove the baby and place it on the table and it is no longer their problem. It isn’t their problem. They have no biological ties to this child and if her own daughter is fine to be whisked away, then certainly this infant is fine to spend the next little while clumped on the table. “Did you hit your head when you fell? Gravity was not your friend.”

“Just—let’s think.” Paces as he speaks, adding in a jaunty little bounce every now and then, keeps the baby quiet briefly, but even its patience is growing thin. “There has to be a reason we were specifically transported here. Last time you and Jackson went to the Ori galaxy and we learned about their motives before they became a threat to our galaxy. So maybe here—”

His shadow drifts across the device, highlighting certain aspects in the lowlight. This is their device, the one from the complex. Has the same dirty crystals, the same tarnished metal and still smells like trash. “Perhaps the others, the ones who took our place, were just playing with the stones.”

“What.”

“Unaware of what could happen.” The device is devoid of stones, of tokens back to their reality where she doesn’t have much but a little more than four shirts, two pairs of pants, and a notorious white plastic bag.

“Maybe we’re here to learn about something that’s going to attack us.” As usual he ignores her explanation, his mind still caught in the gears of the idea that this is an educational not accidental excursion when it may be nothing more than two people who noticed two stones fit two holes.

Can’t help but arch another eyebrow at the drastic change in form when an infant, a screaming little potato who may possibly need a diaper change, is part of the equation. Tau’ri men take pride in their lineage, at least that’s what she’s garnered from books and programs she’s been exposed to. The majority of Tau’ri men take interest in and protect their offspring, which is quite unusual for the other planets she’s visited. “Maybe they’ll make us rear their children.”

“Well that would be your specialty.”

There is the missing rebuke from before. Biting wit with a snicker as he fixes the child’s blanket while saying such malicious words. She can’t say anything because it’s unsurprising, but it doesn’t hurt any less. Friends—family, a team she’s bonded with and has inclinations she’s become an asset to, all too loose with their tongues. She shakes her head at him, disappointed, and marches towards the only exit from the room.

Hears his footsteps clonk after her but she doesn’t stop her stride. Desperately misses her empty bed and falling asleep to celebrity reality shows around this time. “Oh don’t act like you don’t—”

The door opens awkwardly, not from the top or sides, but spins like a gold coin between two fingers. The air is a bit stale, smelling vaguely of rust, metal and a little like raw meat. The connecting corridor is not any brighter than the room, but she can not even wager a stumble down unknown pathways because someone stands in her way. A young woman, with shining gray skin and cat eyes.

“Oh-kay.” With his free hand he grabs the collar of her shirt and drags her back while tucking the child closer to him. They hit the device table again, and her collar is stretched behind repair, lolling off her left shoulder. “Hey we—uh—we—really don’t know what’s happening here, but we don’t mean any harm.”

“We know exactly what’s happening.” Fingers preen at the collar, trying to situate it back into the proper place because she only has four shirts, and this is one of them. She must fill out forms to get new shirts which is absurd, because if she had clearance she could go buy her own shirts. There’s paperwork for everything and always a clause why she cannot leave the complex without explicit verbal or written permission.

“Vala, you maybe want to do something to help?”

“Gray Girl,” she addresses the alien, vaguely aware of Cameron trying to reel her back in by the collar. She dodges his swipe at the last second. “We cannot understand you. Is it possible that you enunciate just a squish?”

The girl speaks to them in a language she’s never encountered. Even when skimming through the files on Daniel’s computer after she hacked it to prove she wasn’t the only one who visited non-work friendly websites. Her words fluctuate between nips of soft sounds and explosive growls of certain syllables. Her body sways with each sound, harmonizing hips for emphasis. She both moves and speaks like a lavatory lamp.

The infant begins to wail again. Face forever wet with tears. Cameron pivots on his foot, stepping forward to whisper, “Why isn’t she tearing our limbs off?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t do that.” Mimics the girl’s actions, tilting her head to the side to view her as she is being viewed. “Or simply doesn’t want to. Maybe not in front of the baby. Pass it to me.”

Before he can protest she plucks the infant up and holds it at arm’s length away. The girl rears, feet toppling backwards, and it becomes very clear a diaper change is needed. “See the child is evil, the silver monster doesn’t want a thing to do with it.”

The gray girl furrows her eyebrows as if in sudden pain and exhausts a whimper from her lips, her rotations slow until she is barely moving at all.  

Cameron leans forward again, his breath hot and his voice a low rumble. “I think she can understand you.”

“What? No.” But as she answers the gray girl nods her head in agreement, her mouth slightly pouting but still opened, corners not frowning or smiling, simply just observing the unfolding drama.

 “Oh yes she can, you’d better apologize to her quick.”

“Look Gray Girl.” The infant squirms in the air as an offering, legs kicking, and grunting much like Cameron. She folds it into the corner of her arm. Limbs become more ambulatory and circle through the air much like the gray girl’s do. The movement is strong and shocking probably because she’s never had the opportunity to hold a baby before. Would like to close her eyes and pretend, but it’s much to late for that. “I’m sorry if we upset you, we can’t understand you. But your skin is a brilliant color. Well done.”

The gray girl nods and smiles and continues to dance for them. Her voice fluctuates again, almost visual in the air, vocal highs and lows partnered with jovial movements. Almost like ballet, but a little more sensual. She knows what it looks like but doesn’t say a word less Cameron get short with her again.

One reflective gray finger sways through the air and stops just before contact with her arm or the baby. The gray girl bounces back on the pads of her feet, then stretches for the baby again.  

“I think she wants the child.”

The gray girl nods and purrs from her throat floating her hands towards her chest to signal relinquishing the baby.

“Do not give him to her.” Cameron, swift in his clonks, presses in beside her, standing before the device which still smells of trash, or perhaps it’s the child’s diaper.

“This is not our child,” reminds and holds the infant, now wailing like a security alarm, out at arm’s length again for the gray girl to scoop up.

“Vala—” Sounds both hurt and shocked, just as he was when he dropped straight onto his face from the ceiling. However, his exclamation and probable recrimination halt when the gray girl coddles the child, nuzzling it to her nose.

“See.”

“Oh.” His body relaxes beside her, throwing off heat everywhere, a lot of heat lately, solar panels at the complex malfunctioning and generating heat on the lower levels, her dorm level, instead of air conditioning. Falling asleep with a comforter to be awoken by her pajamas sticking to her skin. She’s complained but the malfunction is tenacious and returns every other day.

“Good job.” She doesn’t want it to mean as much as it does. Praise, not really praise, just acknowledgement. Her old attitude, her persona of thievery, sly movements in the shadows and grand escapes lurk far in the back of her mind. She changed. She changes and they’re hesitant to accept it as they feel she’s always double crossing them. She supposes it’s warranted, but she’s learned how to trust them more than any others she ever has, that the trust isn’t equal is painful.

But he’s actually looks at her, directly at her, and she tries to not fidget, not to pick at something in her teeth, because he doesn’t like to have face-to-face conversations with her unless they’re for reprimanding. He smiles thoughtfully, and she darts her gaze away from him. “Thank Y—”

The gray girl whistles with two fingers in her mouth, and the baby doesn’t even think to stop screaming.

“What was that?”

“Oh, probably a call alerting others.” Truly fidgets because as with all her intuitive plans, they tend to backfire and make the situation much more difficult and much more dangerous, then Cameron or Daniel or whomever she’s accompanying from SG-1 becomes irate in disappointment.

Keeps the smile on his face as a mask for the gray girl, even though she appears fluent in English. He bumps her shoulder with his, “Do you have any weapons?”

“No.” Shakes her head and her pigtails helicopter near his face.

“You were awake, and you didn’t think to find a weapon.”

“It’s not that I wasn’t looking for one. I did things in the proper order.” A tiny little yellow robot, the size of a meal tray appears at the toe of her boot. It has flashlights for eyes and lets out pulsating beeps as it scans them. She steps over it. “I evaluated the injured and moved you into a position where you wouldn’t suffocate on your face.”

“Vala.”

Spins around accentuating with her hands the work she’s done. Followed protocol to the syntax of each sentence in the procedural outlines “When it became apparent you weren’t in critical condition, I accessed the room for safety issues.”

“Vala.”

The weeks she spent in an interrogation room combing through the processes, the several theoretical quizzes and three field tests for following the rules. Their rules. The psychological exams that frightened her because they would see her faults, her fears and her worth. “Upon my examination of the room for immediate threats of death or injury, I found no weapons.”

“Vala,” he shouts.

“What?” So she shouts.

The baby stops crying, and the gray girl’s slanted syllables drop from the air. Even the little robots pump the breaks and halt in their mechanical chittering.

“What are these?” Crouches to touch one but it reverses away from his fingers. Another curiously parks beside his shoes. “They look like horseshoe crabs.”

“What on Earth is a horseshoe crab?” Cautiously eyes the two at her feet, and the one crawling around the circumference of the unsteady table. It pauses and trains its lights on her. She blocks them with her palm, then gently pats it on the head. It accepts and chirps.

“Ahh,” Cameron cries out in pain behind her, his face red and his body crumpling to the floor.

“Cam—” She gets one step before something pierces through her left combat boot, cold and crippling and she falls forward unable to catch a breath.


	3. Interrogation Tactics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed. I apologize about the delay between this chapter and last, real life and other stories got in the way. I will continue to update as I can and hope you continue to enjoy.

“If you started answering my questions, things would go a lot quicker.”

“Not until you answer my question.”

He’s chained to a metal table in a brand new room with white bumpy walls that are probably soundproof. It kind of looks like a place where the space military meets up for band practice without getting dad mad.

Woke up here with the side of his face pressed into a cold table. The same side of his face that hit the ground at high speed after the zen stones worked their voodoo. His face is sore. It’s making him sore. The taste of tin in his mouth and the clanging of his cuff leash against the metallic surface reminds him of utensils scratching up the bottom of his mom’s good china that last quiet Christmas before she died. Makes him miss Deke’s screams. He misses Deke.

Feels like he’s being good copped and bad copped at the same time by an army general who can’t make up his mind. When his vision cleared for the second time tonight, the good General Landry introduced himself—he was still wiping the spit away from the corners of his mouth while the General apologized for their curt behaviour—tazed from behind by his own interdimensional Earth neighbors, an olive branch it was not. The exposition continued—the base couldn’t have two people looking the same part as two other people—one who’s in a position of power—running around. They needed to suss out the situation and blah blah blah—he might have taken a quick five. Still hasn’t answered the good General. Not true. He’s said several things, but they’re the same sentence running on repeat to the tune of chain clanking music and Milli Vanilli lyrics.

“This isn’t an interrogation, or a hostage situation.” Landry’s unchained hands mock him and teepee against the tabletop silently. “We want you to go home. We want you back with your people and our people back here.”

So he smiles alluringly to draw the General in and mimics the teepee though it’s not quick full steeple and the cuffs are so loud they sound like a dump truck hitting the side of a building. “Where is my wife?”

The good General groans at the question, a little bit of sweat peeking out from his temples and his receding hairline. He sort of looks like the human version of Rygel. How much does he eat? Does he have concubines? God, he wants to see him ride around on a little throne. “Are you hungry at all? Thirsty? Colonel Mitchell isn’t the biggest fan of coffee, but I can get someone to bring you a cup.”

Leans in on one elbow, slick skin greasing up their nice disinfected table. Everything about him is infectious, the vomit stain, the moist skin, the head wound that’s going to open if he lands on his damn face one more time. Sets his jaw, mulling over the decision. Coffee on Earth from a military base is probably as good as coffee from the hospital where they spent all nighters with his mom. “Donde esta mi esposa.”

Finally, the bullshit runs dry and the teepee collapses. The General’s face looks like it’s melting. His does too. Being in the hot seat, an obvious interrogation, makes him sweat a bit. Deke’s dried vomit smells sweet and sour being aggravated by his sweat. “I just want to have a conversation about where you’re from and what happened before you got here. What do I need to do to get that conversation started?”

“Quid pro quo, Lector. Bring me my wife.”

He chuckles in this throat and it bobs like a certain Hynerian’s. Small eyes rolling and disappearing into folds of skin. “Son, you have a one-tracked mind.”

“Well Dad, you took my family away.”

The laughter dies in his throat and his skin ripples when he swallows. Bushy eyebrows droop in seriousness. “We don’t have your son.”

“Yeah, I believed that before you tazed our asses and separated us into interrogation bunkers.” Hasn’t been tazed before, at least not with whatever they used—weird snake thing that made a weird non-snake sound. Every sound here is annoying, and he never thought he would wish for their son’s deafening screams. Silence isn’t silence on Earth.

“It’s protocol to question off world visitors separately,” The General states matter-of-factly with an empty hand gesture. Like he’s being roped into rules that he’s written.

“Ah-Ha,” shouts and raises his hands to point his accusations, but the chain catches short and he hits himself in the side of his sore face. They have sides of the bed, the smallest bed on Moya—well Deke’s space bassinet would be the smallest, but co-sleeping is so exhausting. Can’t move off his side, the same sore side. The same punched up jaw from where he smacked his face off the floor resetting a wormhole weapon. “So this is an interrogation.”

“No, it’s a Q&A session.”

“So, she’s being questioned in another room?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s telling you less than I am.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you’re interrogating her,” he states matter-of-factly copying the empty hand gesture. His dad would tell him not to be a smart ass, respect the authority even if it isn’t his Earth’s authority. Aeryn would—well she’d be quiet because she’s giving him the silent treatment because of the thing they’re going through where they need to talk but can’t get to it because of more pressing matters.

“She held Colonel Carter at gunpoint—”

“You. Tazed. Us.” Slaps his hand against the table with each word. Phantom spasms still clench his muscles every few minutes.

“We have no malicious intent.”

“Well, then you’d be the first.”

“Stuff like this happen to you two often?”

“More often than not.” The dance they do of obsessive to the point of entombment with emotions. The basic desire—the need to touch, and stroke, and taste resulting in shoving away, the fighting then silenced tongues. They separate and rekindle and set ablaze and now they’re married and is this going to be happening forever? “She’ll leave and I wait and I have to save her but to do that she has to save me after.”

“Well, that is not what I meant, but it sounds tiring.”

“That’s not what’s tiring.” Woke up with a baby beside him. Their son, and he told him for the first time that Crichton’s don’t cry which is a lie. He cries all the time. In front of people. Alone. In the shower. The shower is great for fluid reduction that doesn’t result in thousands of tiny crying Crichton’s in a seven-cycle stasis. “Are we in Australia?”

“United States.”

“Somehow I always end up back in Australia.” Finding her behind him with a gun trained on him. His hand on her knee for stability. His, she was more solid than when he was a statue. Trusted him. Followed him. Strolled through the rain with open-mouthed awe and he was in love. He is in love. “Look, where’s my goddamn wife?”

“You come back to Earth often?” A weird information seeking pickup line in the garage band bar. The subject change instant and distracting like rapid fire questions at the end of trivia shows. “Have family members who can vouch for you?”

“Just my wife if you wanna bring her in here.”

“I’m willing to allow a break in protocol to reunite you two because SGC hasn’t exactly extended an olive branch to you—”

“You did, you just beat us with it and then tazed our asses.”

Ignores the interruption and launches from the table without even shaking it—so he tries to shake it and it doesn’t budge. It must be made from pure adamantium. “—However, you need to give me some information about yourself: A full name, and where you came from.”

“The first time we came back it was in Australia and they kept asking questions like that.”

“Didn’t end well?”

“They killed two of our friends but we—I always wondered if that was the night.” The rain pounding at the window, the rain still wet on her neck. She was in a full business suit when he woke, maps everywhere and plotting a journey to India. What would it have been like to be on the lam with her. Playing Bonnie to her Clyde, telling her not to shoot every single person they spoke to. Would it have been hard to find a surgeon to release the baby if that had been the night. “It turned out to be a simulation and my friends are still alive—well, one of them is. It still felt so real.”

“Not a simulation, Son. You’re in America. Colorado.”

“You know.” Fidgets to get into a comfortable position—the heavy metal chair now digging into the back of his thighs no doubt leaving a red line or two. A blue line or two. When did she know? Really know. Because seven years is a lot of time, and maybe she always knew that it was his and not his all at once. “Normally, I’d say something rebellious like, ‘you’re not my dad’, but I don’t think my dad exists on this version of Earth. So you can be my this Earth Dad, I guess. Want to meet your daughter-in-law?”

“I’m sure if he does exist, he’d like to know you’re okay.”

Time to give a little because he’s played banter backswing like Agassi and isn’t getting anywhere. If anything is true it’s that Aeryn can take care of herself and hold her own, and because of that he needs to be the weakest link and bend to keep things in motion. “We’ve spent most of our time in the Uncharted Territories.”

“Where’s that?”

“In the Milky Way and to the left a bit.”

“How long were you there for?”

“Spent about a month there after the war to take it easy and deal with the baby.” Thought Deke was always hungry—not a Crichton thing, but Rygel did carry him for a quadmester—Grandmama cooked up batches of food they mashed down until they could find a trading post. The money and the danger to grab a Capri Sun pack of the awful smelling crap almost wasn’t worth it. He’s a hybrid. Doesn’t know of he needs the PK vitamins. Doesn’t know if he can just have mashed space banana. Doesn’t know of he can regulate his own heat because he’s red and hot and always in an awful mood for being a fucking baby. “Look, I told you what you wanted to know, I just want to see my wife.”

“I need a name.”

“I thought it was General Landry.” Fighting for her. Always fighting for her even when there’s no one to fight. Even when it’s her he has to fight for her. Even when he has to fight himself. Did other him ever treat her like this. “Commander John Crichton of IASA. I went up on a wormhole mission in 1999 called the Farscape Project.”

“Well, I can honestly say I’ve never heard of you or your mission.”

“Gee, thanks Dad.”

A knock at the door interrupts the General’s speed walk around the concrete floor. The door opens and a parade of Colonel Carter, the blonde scientist with the biggest eyes he’s ever seen, strolls in followed by Aeryn, followed by fived armed guards—with their guns ready at attention. Two of the guards are bruised up and he’s never been prouder.

When Carter stops, Aeryn stops and the guards form a semicircle around her, blocking out the doorway and creating one hell of a fire hazard. Carter divulges, “she’s speaking an alien dialect, Sir, one I’ve never heard.”

Both she and the General turn his way, eyes squinting with irritation or maybe allergies, or sweat because it’s so damn hot in this room. His eyes slam to Aeryn, still in his shirt, still in Calvin’s underwear and her body sort of glows under the lights. She’s sweating. He worries.

“You might want to go tear Dr. Jackson away from his preparations.” Carter nods and breaks through the wave of armed men at the door. The General nods to the soldiers, one steps out of formation to fiddle with Aeryn’s handcuffs—ones she could very easily snap in two—another comes and undoes his because he’s pathetic and can’t move the table. “I’ll leave you two alone for a moment.”

The General walk to the soldiers—parting them like the red sea—but stops in the light of the open doorway. “These men and three more will be posted outside this door. We’ve just started building a rapport, becoming violent would be an awful setback to a peaceful alliance.”

He rubs his raw wrists, he did try to break the cuffs—knew Aeryn would, and that’s why he had to Bonnie. He has to take a backseat and be the platonic explainer. The off-planet orator. “Don’t be calling the kettle black now.”

His comment goes ignored, of course, and the door slams shut. Heavy clunking echoes as it’s bolted in place. So, if they do break out and into the royal rumble in the hallway from the hell in the cell, it should prove to get him nice and tired.

Sways on his feet a bit while meeting her on the other side of the table. She’s rubbing her wrists as well, her cuffs tighter because she obviously broke out of the first set. Red and a little raw, nothing too serious. His fingers trace over the where the soft skin becomes blistered. Her heat is obvious. “You okay?” 

Aeryn wrenches her arm away so fast he thinks he touched a soft spot, or maybe his body heat is agitating hers. He takes a step back. “No Crichton, I don’t know where my son is.”

She bursts by him, away from the door and the mirror on the wall that’s not fooling anyone. False anger to create a private situation where lips and words can’t be interpreted. Or real anger and he’s going to get hit in the side of the head again. “No, we know he’s on Moya. We don’t know where Moya is.” He pads after her, loyal as ever, and adds, “Also friendly reminder—he is our son. Your son. My son. Your son. My son. Our son, Aeryn.”

“Then start acting like it.” Loud over his impression—the impression of a man who hasn’t left his room in over almost a month because pinhead priests don’t know how to keep the peace. Her words are loud. He sees them. Floating in the air, heavy like cartoon anvils. Bolded and underlined and italicized to for emphasis. So heavy they suck the air from his lungs from their gravitational pull and he can’t answer her because other him probably wouldn’t do this. “Do you even care?”

In the littlest of broken down squeaks he’s able to answer while memorizing the concrete swirls in the floor. “Of course I care.”

She’s perched on the table now. Soundless and light. Legs sticking to the surface, skin glistening and reddening under her eyes, her tired eyes, the eyes that he made tired “You seem to have regrets.”

And she thinks he doesn’t want this—well of course he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t know where the hell they are, and he wants it to be cooler and her to be happier and not tired and just content and in his arms like the briefest of moments after an Australian cloudburst seasoned her skin. “I don’t have regrets, it’s just—” Plops beside her, the very image of a drunken bear, his ass hits the metal with a thunk and his leg jostles into hers, peeling the skin away to reveal more redness. “Everything happened fast, I need time to adjust.”

“You adjusted to living in space quiet easily.”  Should be talking about more pressing matters, how many soldiers she thinks she can take out, so he knows how many he has to, what they’re going to tell the General if they can’t break out of here. If she has any idea at all how to get home. But sometimes less pressing stuff is just more pressing. Sometimes sitting with his wife in an interrogation room—that has definitely not been the place of an alien murder or autopsy—and talking about how their lives have changed since getting married and having a baby and stopping an intergalactic war is more pressing.

Sometimes watching the way her eyelashes fan and her teeth tap just before biting her lower lip, like the words she exhaled might hurt him because he taught her compassion—he didn’t other him did—is always more important. “No, I didn’t. I’m still adjusting.”

Talking forward like they always do, giving the wizard behind the curtain—plump General behind a mirror—a good old show. “Do you assume it was easy for me?”

Wants to touch her. Needs to, jostle her again with his leg, or lean shoulder to shoulder, or ensnare her hand with his. Check to see how hot she is. Ask her short-term memory questions. “No, I know it was a hell of a lot harder for you, but you’re stronger than me.”

“I never wanted children.”

“Okay, well, I think this conversation is a few weeks too late.” His hand floats back to his lap cupping over the sweats on his knee. The notion in his head that touching her will make her hotter—not just temperature wise—cause an infinite loop of tiny Crichton spores kept in her Schrodinger’s uterus.

Faces him straight, and he could trace the lines under her eyes with his fingers, taste the salt of her skin. “I never wanted children because they would be taken from me by the Peacekeepers and raised how I was. Then Scarrans wanted my baby and I had to fight for my life and a life that wasn’t my own.” She turns away from him again, eyes glassy but strong and narrowing as she adds, “and I did that for you.”

“For me?”

“Because I knew how badly you wanted the baby, how important family is to you. I couldn’t deny you your family.”

“You—” He has to pause and think it through. Think through why she left Moya in her prowler without him if she was aware of the pregnancy. To release the baby, or to _release_ the baby. “You didn’t want our son?”

“He was never unwanted, just under appreciated by me.” Her grin grows like the sun over Kansas fields, and her eyes light up and he’s happy she’s happy. “But when I saw him I knew I loved him and needed to protect him, so he didn’t end up like me.” Smile clouds over and everything returns to darkness. A single tear shudders from her eye. “And now I cannot do that John. I can’t do that.”

“Come here.” Drapes an arm around her shoulders and is surprised when she doesn’t immediately shrug it off or tear it from his body. She’s burning up, and his calm expression washes from his face in the realization of the danger. “He’s on Moya with Pilot and Chiana and Granny.” Swallows hard and works double time to keep the panic from blurring his eyes. “They’ll take care of him, they’ll keep him safe for us because he’s their family too.”

“I hate this,” mumbles into his shoulder, the black cotton sticking to both their skin.

“I know.” His hand falls to her hip and he gives a small squeeze for reassurance, his and hers. Mostly his. She’s too hot.

“No, being emotional.” Finally, she pulls away with a large snuffle. Too hot to embrace—too dangerous. Kicks up the anxiety in his belly, the one that makes it so hard to sleep. The one where all the baddies in Arkham Asylum are vying to get revenge on him through his wife and son.

“Honey, you just had a baby. You just need time to adjust.” Always forgets she did all the work. All of it, released the baby herself, stayed alive during torture he’s never asked about because he thinks even if she sugar-coats it he’ll cry—like a baby—with their son.

“That’s the problem, John. I’ve already adjusted.” He was moral support sure, but he also had a war to win and a wormhole to birth, does she ever take into account what he had to do to—No Deke’s birth was definitely worse, he never tried to cut the wormhole out with a knife. It never got stuck breech in his frontal lobe.

“It’s a big change being responsible for—”

“You were always responsible for us, and us for you. I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you.”

“Then what is?”

Her lips are starting to chap, and they pull tightly against her features as she speaks words she doesn’t want to. Just as he’s the scapegoat—the Curly always butterfingering their interrogations or interactions up to keep operations running smoothly—her sacrifice comes in being throat cuttingly honest even when she doesn’t want to be. “The permanence of it.”

* * *

 

 

Face down again. Face down and the air is humid from his nostrils to his face. The bridge of his nose hurts, but not enough to be broken. Does another push up, expects some blood, but there is none. Broke his nose before and doesn’t want to fill out an incident report saying the cause of his broken nose was a just nasty fall.

His eyes dart around to focus on a baby crying and the phantom movements of someone rocking the kid. A voice, not Vala’s accent, hits the air with small bursts like a songbird cheep. “Shush up little gnarl, your parents are just being a little fahrbot right now.”

“I can hear her.” Vala scrambles up beside him. Her shoulder knocks him arm out from under him and he half collapses.

“So can I,” he mutters rubbing his nose, then his elbow.

She crouches and leans in, one of her pigtails rests on his shoulder and she whispers loud enough that the baby can probably understand her. “I meant understand her.”

“Obviously.”

“What the biznak’s gotten into you two.” The alien tilts her head, swiveling it forward as he pulls himself up using the unsteady table. Her cat eyes blink twice. Her voice, the words she chooses, she sounds much younger than he’d anticipated. “I—I mean the loud arguing is nothing, but whatever you did blew out your translator microbes which I never heard of happening.”

“Okay, look.” Takes a step forward, a diverting tactic. Draw attention to himself to protect his teammates. In less dangerous situation, the background teammate might even be able to scurry away using the distraction of the conversation. “We have no idea who you are or where we are.”

Vala didn’t get that memo, or the training. Or any basic understanding of tactics in a potentially dangerous situation. Instead she falls to conversation and flattery powered purely by luck. Her luck has the potential to overpower them all. As a team they agreed to never tell her about lottery tickets. “Not true we’re on a ship—”

Slides a hand out at her side, halting her from making further contact or conversation with the alien. “Not helping.”

The baby hiccups and the alien purrs at him, rocking him in the cradle of her arm. She plasters a nervous smile to her face—white teeth, pink gums, and silver lips. He’s never seen anything that looks remotely like her before, except for maybe a slinky barn tabby he had as a kid. “Stop kidding around. We’re still on Moya.”

“What is Moya.”

Her grin falls to the floor and the baby abruptly starts to choke back into crying. She moves forward, her head angling the opposite direction, Vala follows suit. He rolls his eyes.  “Pilot did we go through any anomalies, cosmic magnetism, space dust, weird light? Anything like that?”

Not quite sure if she’s speaking with him, or Vala, or a third party. Then on a device that resembles a clam, a picture of an alien—which also looks like a clam—joins their conversation. “No Chiana, Moya hasn’t flown by anything like that in several solar days, why?”

He and Vala stand still, mouths still agape, her head still slanted, and both their eyebrows hit the roof. Glances towards her to gauge her reaction, after all she is the alien, and she just pulls her lips tight, nodding with the widest eyes he’s ever seen.

“Aeryn and John are acting really weird.”  The alien’s attention falls back on them, and he clamps a hand on Vala’s wrist to get her to stop bobbing around. It’s like she has her own gravity. Hell, maybe she does.

“I can analyze their physical data and see if I can verify—”

“What?” Hard to hear now because the baby hollers, his mouth gummy and opened. The alien—Chiana?—she  places the kid back down on the table,  unwrapping his blanket. The whiff of a very ripe baby enters the air and he groans. When the clam alien doesn’t continue Chiana glances up from swaddling the kid. “Verify what?”

“Chiana,” There’s a long pause. Maybe their communication cut out. Maybe they did go through an anomaly and this whole thing isn’t directly his fault for allowing the communication device back into SGC. “That is not John or Aeryn.”

Chiana pivots with her whole body. The perfect basketball block. Ends up in the doorway. Eyes blinking wild and unfocused. “So who the frell are you then?”

“We’re from Earth.” Shows the palms of his hands to prove he’s not a threat. “We work with the military using stargates.”

“What the frell’s a stargate?” Her head cranks to the side.

“It’s a wormhole that—”

“Does every Crichton obsess over wormholes?”

“I’m sorry.” Vala takes a step forward. When she tries to take another he tightens his grip on her wrist. She tugs once, and with an irritated sigh, continues, “but what’s frell? What’s a Crichton?”

“Frell, is, well,” Chiana pauses, then with a grin and a shrug adds, “frell.”

“Helpful.”

“And Crichton is you.” A gray finger directs to him this time. It circles in the air like any other of her appendages.

“We’re Crichton?” Vala gestures with her hands between their bodies, then sends a flashy grin and nod to Chiana.

“No,” Chiana shakes her head and Vala’s grin falters. “He’s Crichton.”

Vala squints her eyes trying to decipher the language already deciphered for them by whatever they were injected with. His foot still aches like he stepped on a wasp. “So Crichton means man.”

“No.” Again Chiana shakes her head, and the kid is oddly quiet now, like himself, as they watch the exchange. “Man means man.”

“Wonderful.” Vala is all teeth and claps again even though she’s been told information she’s already knew. At this point Jackson would have escorted her back to the device and continued his conversation for more information. He, however, finds it slightly amusing because both women don’t show any sign of irritation. Calmly trying to bypass what left of the language barrier with patience and grins. “what does Crichton mean?”

“Oh my God,” he chuckles at her. Not entirely at her, more like at her tenacity, her inability to not stop poking the bear.

“Crichton is his name.”

“No, he’s Cameron.”

“Well he looks like Crichton. Does he get grouchy quickly?” Vala and Chiana stand beside each other, like old friends meeting up in a coffee shop. The rapid-fire dialogue gives way to nodding and pensive looks before answers.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Vala touches her chest with one hand in a gesture of gratitude and Chiana’s arm with her other. Jackson would hate this.

“Enough.”

“Enough with you.” Chiana tries to shoo him away even though his interruption isn’t more than him situating himself back in the conversation.

Vala hugs herself to his arm and he fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Cameron isn’t bad at all, he’s very helpful and quite a gentleman. His mother also makes excellent pies.” Her words leave him speechless for a moment. Usually, they carry a heavy tone of mockery, but her voice is very genuine and he cracks a grin at her making hers grow.  

“Then who are you? You’re supposed to be Aeryn.”

“I’m Aeryn?”

“She’s Vala.” He introduces her and with her arms still wrapped around his and it reminds him of his high school reunion. He still has a picture of them with a bee and the worst smiles he’s ever seen tucked away somewhere in his dorm.

“Vala.” Chiana says the name again and then nods with approval. “Yeah you’re way too happy to be Aeryn and your hair is cuter.”

“Chiana, do you know what happened?”

“Frell if I know.”

“Oh” Vala jumps making him jump slightly in surprise. The horseshoe crabs are still scurrying around the floor. Maybe they jabbed her with something else. They remind him of replicators. He hates replicators. “Frell means fuck.”

Pats her arm in appreciation. “I got that.”

“Hey, I did see that weird hookah light up though.”

“The weird—”

“Ha.” Vala slaps him in the chest and spins around back to the device. “See, I told you.”

Guilt pricks at his stomach. She did warn him, and he assumed it was going to be a normal transfer. Up at 0600 to watch soldiers load the thing into a transport. Sign and stamp the papers and finish out the day. For his early morning sacrifice, he was going to get the next day off, and he had plans. Amy was flying in. “So much for not saying the actual words.”

“What?” Chiana joins them soundlessly approaching from behind and shoves her head in the space between theirs to stare at the device. He gets a good second scare.

“This device,” he begins but notices the kid is finally asleep in her arms. He lowers his voice to a whisper, “transfers consciousness from one body to another throughout galaxies”

“But we have our own bodies,” Vala reminds both completely unhelpful and helpful at the same time. What caused them to teleport instead of transferring? The docs back at Cheyenne Mountain have hopefully realized about the switch—or disappearance—by now. Jackson and Carter working together should have this thing cracked by noon.

“Who else is on this ship?” Chiana’s eyes flicker and she lurches on her feet, shoulders flying up in defense. Vala smacks him in the shoulder with the back of her hand and he clears his throat as he clarifies, “I just want to know if anyone else can help us.”

Chiana’s mouth skews to the side as she processes his question, “well there’s me, Deke, Stark, Pilot, the old woman, and Moya.”

“Oh, I want to meet the old woman first.”

Again, silences Vala with a tug on her wrist and her enthusiasm disappears from her face. “I thought you said Moya was the ship.”

“She is.”

“So she’s a person? Has an avatar?”

“No, but she’s alive.”

“We’re inside a ship that’s alive.”

Vala grasps his wrist now, effectively killing off his next question. “Are we to be digested?”

“No.” Chiana laughs and the baby gurgles. She sways him again and turns her eyes towards the ceiling and then the walls. “Moya’s a ship, she’s always happy to have passengers on board.”

“Chiana,” The clam lights up again showing the same shell alien, but it doesn’t have the same peaceful tone as before, and its eyes squint as it speaks to her. “Moya wishes the trespassers be brought to my den immediately for examination.”


	4. Manhandled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to write more of this, but it's very hard. The dialogue flows so easily but then adding in the inner monologues and actions takes forever. Please be patient and I'll try to update when I can.

“How many times are you going to make me repeat myself when I know you’re video recording this.” He’s lax, a boneless pile thrown into the chair beside her; his fellow humans keeping disparaging acts of violence to a minimum. ‘Man-handled’ as he called it, ‘unwanted physical contact resulting in proper defense’ in her lexicon.

This General is much different from the captains in the Peacekeeper army. His eyebrows vacillate with compassion and comprehension. He may be an authority in extracting pertinent information from prisoners, but his quirks and mannerisms remind her of John’s father. “We just want to get our ducks in a row.”

“Ducks?” The room is plagued with people, far to many and every microt that passes the temperature raises more klances. Despite them cultivating what they term a ‘peaceful’ interrogation process, there is every suggestion that they’re employing a slow raising heat-based torture tactic to get her to be more agreeable.

“It’s an idiom, Honey.” His attention on her is brief, showering it on the General and the dozens of similar apprearanced soldiers, but amplifies as he returns, his eyes narrowing perhaps detecting the bit of sweat blistering at her hairline. The expectation is that he will say something to divulge her weakness, and in doing so it will result in their extortion for her good health. Instead, he clarifies with an analytical expression. “Ducks are easier to shoot if they’re all lined up.”

“Obviously.”

“She does speak English, right?” The General directs his stout fingers towards her, and as those expressive brows lower she’s privy to the glisten of something in his eyes. “Because she was speaking English when you got here.”

Rather than answer him, she crosses her arms, ignoring the squelching of moisture in her armpits and pooling underneath her breasts, leaning forward and resting against her knee in boredom.

John leans in slightly, his wayward hand resting further up the expanse of her thigh where the Calvins have rolled under. “You can chime in on this whenever you want to—”

Plucks his hand, radiating an untold heat directly into her body, from her thigh with a forefinger and thumb. Refuses to make eye contact with him and continues her dialogues in Sebacean. “I will not be revealing any information which could lead them to Moya and allow them to harm my son.”

The second man at the table, the one who replaced the only female she’s witnessed so far, finally moves from where his hands were clasped against his mouth in what looked to be a prayer. His skin is tight around his face, his lips very pale and his eyes appear uneven under the thin-rimmed spectacles pinned to his face. He addresses John, but his finger juts at her in succession. “How do you understand her?”

John attempts to lean himself back in the chair but fails when he finds the material used in its construction too considerable to even jostle. Instead his body refolds, hands burrowing beneath his arms and he sucks in the corner of his mouth. “Translator microbes.”

“Which are?”

“Exactly what they sound like.”

“Okay.” The man scoffs, hot refuse diffusing into the small room, stirring the air and the intensity of temperature empties her lungs. “No need for sass.”

But she forgets about John’s intuition, his memory of her body and the changes that overtake her in certain conditions. How he’s seen her suffer from the delirium twice and both times failed to acknowledge her plea for a quick and satisfying death, instead leaving her to boil in her own body while he searched for a reversal method.

His expression now is one of open concern, flaring nostrils, downturned eyes with pinhole pupils, and as his thumb drips from his lip, she interrupts what she construes as his apprehension, her eyes wrenching shut in the torture of her own body touching. “I don’t understand why we haven’t broken out of here and searched for a way back—”

Stretches to grasp at her, his hand practically on fire, and she shrugs her shoulder up to halt the impeding contact. The concern then bleeds into hurt with a patient sigh. “Because they’re our best way of getting back.”

“No, the stones and that device are.”

The man with the glasses whom they introduced to them as a doctor, with no military background decidedly on how he carries himself, omits a slight groan, leaning his elbows and hands against the metal table, the same one she has a leg wrapped around trying to siphon away the coolness.  “We don’t want to hurt you or your friends.”

John simply points a finger at him, the gesture a passive challenge. “Tazed.”

“We want to send you back.” The doctor has not let his attention stray from her. The sensation is all too familiar, being watched, feeling guarded, something she hasn’t experienced since the Scarrans. The ability of anyone to view her how she doesn’t want to be seen. As small, as incompetent. As just a female. His words trying to elicit compassion from her that does not exist. “We want our people back.”

“We just want to protect our people.” The General clarifies, his hands flat and spread over the tabletop, his back straight but not arched forward, his words calm with a smattering of an accent sticking on. His effect calming unlike the doctor. “Can you please just tell us if our people will be safe on your ship?”

Moya. Home. Her son stranded in the command center until hopefully Chiana stumbles upon him during one of her never ending routes throughout the ship. She doesn’t stop. Her son’s red-faced crying, their trials to find him nutrients and meals, the increase in his bodily temperature injecting her with the lingering feeling of transferring her own inadequacies to her offspring, her own faults to bring him down when she just wants to sense the quick raise and fall of his back, of lungs she formed within her, of his gurgles from a slobbering mouth and fat cheeks.

“Is this guy okay?” John gestures the doctor.

“Excuse me?”

“You look like you’re about to snap and take out a bus full of kindergarteners.”

“I’m a little on edge.” The cadence of his voice increases to display the proper level of his indignation. Apparently on this version of Earth, people are quick to offend. “You’ll have to excuse me, but you can understand that this is a little bit shocking for us.”

Her eyes lock on to this doctor, her body remains stable and unwavering and sweating from all crevasses. Arches an eyebrow at him, and in perfect English, with the drab tone indicating sarcasm, she voices, “for you?”

The men stop their chattering. Even the armed guards creating a ring around the room like a children’s game, stop rustling with their weapons.

“Look—” John tucks his head into his palm, fingers tapping at his temple. He becomes uneasy in captivity. He becomes anxious when she will not allow him to touch her. But he never abandons his intuition, has her knowledge of discomfort with this doctor who presumes to know her when she is not the woman he lost. “Can you take him to an exercise pen or something? Run it out of him?”

“I’m sorry.” The doctor stutters, not out of nervousness as she’s seen men do before, but rather out of irritation. His torso hunches forward, his hands sliding over the table into her territory. Precognitive of her attack should he drift to close, he withdraws just as quickly and instead fumbles to his feet. “Is this some kind of joke for you? Because we lost two of our teammates today—”

John still splays across his chair, his mouth clicking as he sucks in air unimpressed with the diatribe. “And we lost a son.”

“Did you ever think that if maybe—maybe if you cooperated—” He continues in his pacing, his boots clomping across the floor, and the General appear unmoved as if this is a regular occurrence.

During the second round of his speech she blinks and becomes lightheaded at the amount of words his mouth hurls into the air, each one hot and weighted. Never thought it possible that a man could speak more than Crichton. Steadies herself with fingers clamping down on the cold table surface, panting as if she’s back running drills again.

Before her husband has a chance to voice his concerns, the doctor’s hand falls to her own, blanketing her in unwanted contact, unrequired concern, and unhealthy heat. With cloudy vision and a weak equilibrium, she still managers to spring from the chair sending it clattering back into the wall and connect a single balled fist with the handsy doctor’s nose. “Do not touch me.”

All the soldiers click into position, drawing their arms and aiming at her.

John, intent on keeping their negotiations, rather their interrogations, as peaceful as possible. Wants to tell him if he wanted to spare her the torture he never should have sent her to search for Leviathan parts out all those cycles ago. “Okay, that was self defense. He was in her private space.”

“You’re in her private space.” The doctor lurches back, his hand pinching the tip of his nose and cupping to catch the blood ribboning out of it.

“We’re married you tool.”

“All right, well I think that’s it for negotiations today.” The General is again, unperturbed as if this is also a regular occurrence. The door groans open, hot metal expanding and impacting brick and concrete. The squadron of soldiers slowly flow out of the room, draping the hallway in armed protection. “I think we all might do a little better on a good night’s rest.”

 The doctor catches himself in the doorway, hand fully consuming his nose and his eyes watering and narrowed. “You know you’re not really gaining our trust”

Her English rebuttal is forgotten in her head as she starts to shake on her feet, and when she scrambles to dictate the stages of heat delirium to herself, she finds she can’t. John crosses his arms, partly to gather attention, partly protective possessive, and steps slightly to guard her. “The feeling is mutual”

* * *

“So—” She focuses on the ceiling, not really seeing any moving parts or receptors, or any sort of gooey bits one would generally expect when inside a digestive system. “We’re in a stomach right now?”

The gray girl slinks ahead of them, the baby resting its head on her shoulder, its tiny blue eyes trying to focus on Cameron or herself, but the bounce of their steps, even over slated metal, causes his attention to flicker, frantic for a destination to stop. A feeling she knows all too well. “Moya doesn’t have a stomach.”

“Then how does she eat?”

“How the frell should I know?” Chiana doesn’t really spat the answer, but her voice becomes punctuated, her words curt.

“Vala.” Cameron’s large hand curls around her bicep and yanks her closer to him as they walk, she glances at his hand on her and then to his face, cocking an eyebrow at him, which immediately gets her released. He clears his throat and then falls into a bit of a Daniel-esque stutter. “Maybe cool it on the questions.”

Her skin prickles in the absence of his hand. Not his touch, although she’s never one to complain about a strong pair of masculine hands on her body, but rather the heat. This ship, if it is living, which she’s not entirely sure it is, is awfully cold. “You’re inside a living thing and you don’t want to ensure that you’re not going to be digested?”

“The questions are getting us into more trouble,” he grumbles from the side of his mouth, his voice steadier, back to the classic army sternness, however she does love when she can get a rise out of him in more than one way.

“We’re inside something’s stomach, how could we possibly be in more trouble.”

“Look—” Chiana pivots on her toes, a swift movement and so perfectly balanced that the child doesn’t stir until a few seconds later. “Pilot and Moya aren’t angry with you, more concerned about where Crichton and Aeryn went.”

“If the ship is alive, then why does it require a pilot.”   

“Princess, please.” He cuts in front of her, copying her half of their chase around the base, wanting her attention for a change and not for a swift reprimanding, but rather a plea. “I’m begging you. Stop. Talking.”

“I’m never one to refuse a man on his knees” The expression he gives her is borderline murderous, but she gives him a plush wink and brushes by him as they approach another large door.

“Hey, are you a real princess?” The baby snuffles or hiccups against the gray girl’s shoulder, and she switches him to the other with a bit of an upturned nose. “Because there was one time that Aeryn was—”

Cameron cuts in before she has a chance to lay the groundwork for a spectacular lie giving her royal rights, “it’s a nickname.”

“What’s that?”

“A name given by friends to show endearment.”

“Oh.” She clasps her hands together, and leans her head back to his shoulder, batting her eyelashes at him again with coquettish ease. “I’m endearing to you?”

“In so much as you’re on my team and therefore I have a responsibility to care about your wellbeing—” The massive door opens smoothly revealing a very murky chamber with the shell creature from the hologram situated in the middle at a desk of sorts. Many of those things Mitchell called ‘whore’s who crabs’ scatter around the ground and along the wall, their little torch eyes dot the darkness.

“I think this surpasses a subtle affinity to me.” With a cheeky grin she picks up her usual position walking backwards while deep in conversation with him. Trying to jam her words out as fast as she can before he eventually shuts down whatever topic she’s brings up. “I think you care about me more than you’d care to admit.”

“Vala—” His tone isn’t completely harsh yet meaning she has a good two or three exchanges in order to work out what she wants to say and decide how much goading she wants to do.

“I’d even wager to say that you—”

Unfortunately, as she takes the next step back, her foot settles on the sudden empty space beside the walkway. Her body starts to tumble backward before she recognizes what exactly is happening, and just as the panic of tumbling storeys down to her death on some random living alien ship sinks in, his arms snatch her up, one on her bicep again and the other on her ribs, settling her beside him with ease.

Then they share an entirely awkward moment where they just gaze at each other as if mid-dance. Just a tingle, just a wisp of a grin.

The ships groans, or perhaps one of the spinning coin doors doesn’t connect in perfection to an oblong archway somewhere, either way the noise jolts the finally slumbering infant awake, and in an instant his fists and his face are clutched tight and his wail echoes throughout the cavernous chamber. She and Cameron disengage as Chiana adjusts the child away from her ear.

“Pilot how did they end up here?” The gray girl prowls easily through the precariously thin walkway with not so much as a blink of second guessing her footfalls. The wailing infant also seems undeterred by the infinite drop into nothingness. “Why aren’t they Aeryn and Crichton?”

“For starters their heat signatures differ vastly.” The monster—rather the alien before her is more enormous than she assumed. When she takes a hesitant step forward in the interest of counting his arms, Mitchell yanks her back into place. The creature—this pilot, pays no attention to the yelp of an outburst she offers, which falls on infant wailing deafened ears. “As she is Sebacean, Aeryn’s body temperature is several degrees lower than Crichton’s, a human. Crichton also has a lower blood pressure than this man.”

“Hey, I am in peak physical health.”

To her delight the crab monster rolls his eyes at Mitchell, then continues to explain, “it is due to your nascent exposure to the uncharted territories.”

Chiana angles her head, her body climbing forward towards the pilot’s desk, sort of perched on the side. “Where did they come from though?”

“Oh, oh.” Her hand blasts into the air and in seconds Mitchell is trying to suppress it, she manages to wrench her arm free, and then take a step forward to spite him. “You’re in possession of a long-range communication device.”

Chiana and the pilot exchange a doubtful, perhaps disapproving look. She flips around on the desk now somewhat crouching to the side still cradling the baby in one arm. “A what?”

“The device on the wobbly table in the room where we met.”

“The hookah?”

“The device can actually transport—”

As Mitchell digresses into a somewhat patronizing explanation of what the horrific devices actually are, the baby twitches against the gray girl chest, punting a leg in the air followed by breaking into another wail.

“I’m sorry, but does that child ever stop crying?” She grinds her teeth together, poised fingers pressing on her temple. The sound reminds her of her home world, rampant with multiple marriages and crops of children. The marketplace a dissonant conglomeration of screaming broods and rampant illnesses spread by screaming broods.

Then she remembers what it was like after Qetesh.

“It’s a baby,” Mitchell huffs, though his tone is more stoic than before. “That’s what they do.”

“Actually, Deke doesn’t stop crying, not really.”

“Well can you get rid of him for a moment.” The marketplace and her betrothed tugging her along between the swarms of people, the crying and singing. Then crying and screaming. Just screaming and red.

“What.”

Cameron waits for clarification but when she doesn’t offer any he translates for her. “I think maybe it’s time to return the little guy to his parents.”

“Sure,” Chiana agrees with a squeak of a giggle, then holds the child out to them.

“No. Oh no.” The massive step she takes in retreat slams her back into Mitchell’s chest.

“You gotta be kidding me.” She notes interestingly enough that his expression isn’t pure horror as hers is, but rather one of mystification.  

 “As I’ve already stated countless times; we are not this baby’s parents.”

“Although You may not be his biological parents, your physical bodies are very much the same.” The pilot’s gentle voice cuts through the strain of baby’s throaty cries hiccupping in and out. “The familiar faces and voices as the child begins to tune his senses might put him at ease.”

“So here.” When the gray girl shoves the infant forward, she turns her body away slightly, locking her arms behind her back. Chiana’s face skews, her eyebrows furrowing. “Haven’t you held a baby before?”

“Briefly before she was pried away from me.” Her lie is better than the truth. She also will never require or seek out his pity on the matter. With a roll of her eyes, she holds out her arms, ready to receive the rather weighty child. “Oh, give it here.”

Chiana pauses, retaining the child at the last second and correcting, “him.”

“Whatever.” Snatches the child and settles him gently so his fat chin rests against the skin on her shoulder exposed by Mitchell’s pawing earlier. When she chances a glance at him, expecting him to say something biting or pithy, instead he has a wide grin on his face, almost mooning a bit. To hide the blush creeping into her cheeks she ducks her head, settling it on the gurgling infant and with a lilt she adds, “if this infant vomits on me I will wipe it on you.”

“Fair enough.” The line isn’t delivered with a laugh, or a chuckle, or any sort of sarcastic action meant to belittle her, instead she can only hear his smile. When Chiana clears her throat, a knowing expression of side-eyes and a pulled grin, he restarts the topic, “did your long-range communication device have stones?”

“Yeah, two of them.”

“We’ll need to examine it then.” She bounces the baby a bit, itty bitty feet squared off against her hip and the first dollop of drool on her skin.

Chiana nods in agreement, the pilot seems to as well with a soft dip of his massive head accompanied by a slow blink. “I’ll take you back to command.”

Though uninjured and less jarred than Mitchell on their transfer into the ship, her body is starting to tire and with the added weight of the child she feels an ache already pooling in her lower back. “Is there no faster method of transportation on Mayo?”

“Moya,” Mitchell corrects from over her shoulder. His finger ghosting over her skin, tickling at the tiny palms of the baby who begins to sour again, the muscles in his face tightening.

As his guttural wails return, the pilot narrows his eyes at them, just a tad on the judgemental side.  “Moya is still not sure you’re entirely to be trusted. You should be more appreciative that you’re not being vacuumed into space.”

“Oh, we are.” Mitchell releases the infant’s hand and nods along with her, wide and innocent. “We are.”

Tired of the crying and the now puddle of drool sliding down the misshapen collar of one of her only four shirts, she rearranges the baby with one hand supporting his bottom and the other arm wrapping around his chest, somewhat primitively buckling him to her for support, but offering him a wider array of people to view. It also works to aim his mouth cannon somewhere besides her very limited wardrobe.

To her, and perhaps everyone’s relief, the crying stops, instead replaced with content gurgles motoring out of a very gummy mouth.

Mitchell now wears a half-grin, one she definitely hasn’t seen before and all these new positive facial expressions of his are more unnerving than the idea that she still might be masticated by a ship. “How did you do that?”

“Well I’m using my hand to support his tiny—”

“No, how’d you get him to stop crying?”

“I don’t know.” Shrugs at him and sways with the child, who is  warm against her chest and jittering his little legs. “Everything is very dark, and everyone is very serious, I thought perhaps if I entertained him—” When she tucks her head down to view the baby, he looks up at her and give her a wide, toothless grin.

“I think he likes you.”

While she appreciates the enthusiasm behind the comments and the underlying intention, properly holding a baby is not the same as pleading with her daughter not to kill and torture millions. “That’s a learned response, Darling.” But she can’t help but grin back down at him. “He likes his mother.”

The baby gurgles back at her, and with a happy twitch kicks his feet.

“No.” He elongates the word, and stoops to be even height with the infant, again taking his tiny hand and again the infant’s face sours. “I think he likes you.”

“Well then, I suppose he’d be the first.” Glances to Chiana who is obviously reading the exchange between Mitchell and herself, smugness tightening her shining lips.

“No he wouldn’t, Princess.”


	5. Cold Shoulders

The hallway they walk down—at his slow pace despite everyone else’s swift military speed—looks exactly like all the other hallways, white and metallic with random pipes running through it like they’re in a submarine, and tight as hell because if this doctor guy bumps shoulders with him again, he’s gonna let Aeryn have a free swing.

Finally, they reach a roundabout of a dead end, a circular room with two doors at what must be the bottom of the mountain and if that’s true it should be a lot cooler. His clothes are starting to stick into all his unmentionable nooks and crannies.

The doctor stops right in the middle of the circle, forcing everyone to file in around him, and he takes the opportunity to shimmy up next to his wife, analyzing her sweat glowing face and trying to discern what stage of heat delirium she’s at and how much time they have before she make him promise to kill her again. At this point it probably should’ve just been in their wedding vows.

But that damn doctor clears his throat and gestures towards two doors across the hall from each other. When he speaks, his voice is still nasally, but he’s downgraded to only a single tissue sticking out of his nose, slopping up the blood.  “The General’s delegated these two rooms for you—”

“Hear that, Honey?” He grins through her daggers, trying to be more of a spectacle, to draw any lingering eyes away from Aeryn so they don’t see the way she sways slightly on her feet—and because he’s caught the guard to his left staring at her ass more than once—and although that’s her ass, the wedding vows should’ve said he’s the one who gets to look. “Even though you’ve beat the shit out of the military’s top classicist—”

“Egyptologist, and she only hit me once.”

The grin shatters from his face and with a serious grumble he reminds, “that’s because it only took one.”

Then he nudges her shoulder—because this is kind of a vacation, a vacation under a mountain that might actually be a volcano barring how hot it is, and under the intense watch of other dimension Earth military, and with the threat of her being boiled into a permanent vegetative state, but there’s no screaming baby and midnight feedings—which he really never did anyway—and no teeny bed to balance on. “We don’t need two rooms.”

“Of course you don’t.” The doctor doesn’t make eye contact with her, his head watching the tiled floor as he unlocks a room and gestures through the open doors again. “It’s protocol, even for SGC members, no fraternizing.”

Okay, so not much of a vacation anymore.

“No sleepovers?” He gets a stiff nod in return—which is the only thing stiff he’s going to be getting while on this Earth—he holds his hand up flashing the wedding band they had custom made for him from the melted down metal of an old module part. “We’re married.”

“As proud as you are of that, it doesn’t matter to us.” The good Doc gives him a shit-eating grin and stands, nosebleed-stained hands behind his back by the electronic door panel. “John, you’ll be in this room and uh—your wife will be across the hall—”

“Her name is Aeryn.”

“—and eight armed guards will be stationed outside your rooms in case you get any thoughts.”

Neither of them moves and the Doc just sort of stares, like they should know what to do. She arches an eyebrow at him, and he watches a big fat drop of sweat bead from under her chin and slip down her neck in between her breasts.

“Hey!” The Doc shouts to get their attention back, “you do understand that you need to get in the rooms, right?”

“Jeez Dr. Happy, can you give me and the wife a second to say goodnight?”

When he doesn’t immediately oblige them, Aeryn speaks up, her voice wavering because he can tell her concentration is on her stance. “Our son is without us, having a moment to negotiate our distraught emotions would be appreciated.”

With reluctance, kind of like he doesn’t want to see the embrace, the good Doc nods and she throws her arms around him, her body weight into him, and Goddamn it, she’s on fire. His shirt pastes to her skin, and she twitches against him from his heat added to hers.

But one of her hands sneaks into his palm, the fingers flat, then suddenly her thumb and pinkie depress throwing him a three.

Three hours until breakout.

*

The rooms aren’t as bad as he thought they’d be—not as much like a prison as most of the other jailcells he’s lived in. There’s a bed—a big bed—bigger than the one on—man, he’s going to have to let that go.

His finger plucks at the collar of his stained and now sweat drenched shirt as he fans the fabric, then just yanks it off over his head. He’s got three hours to kill, and they’ve been kind enough to leave some basic clothing—military issued of course—on the gigantic bed.

There’s an area with a desk, a lamp, and a notepad—even a touchtone phone that’s been unplugged and left in the room for decoration. It’s dark, not only from being buried however many storeys underground, but the room is constructed with different types of metal and concrete making him miss the dark but warm-hued palette on Moya.

They even gifted him with the smallest bathroom he’s ever seen, a toilet, sink and shower in a space so small he couldn’t lay down if he wanted to. Naturally, he turns the shower to cold, letting it run and leaving the door open so it cools down the room as he picks out a pair of thin gray sweats and a new plain black shirt.

He hops into the shower, getting shocked by the cold and adjusting the temperature to a relaxing almost lukewarm and praying that Aeryn is doing the same across the hall and not passed out on the ground—tries to tear his mind away from his wife because their son is almost five weeks old, but it’s been six weeks—and he’s gone six weeks before—but never with someone looking so goddamn hot—not in a literal sense usually—laying less than an arm’s length away with her cold skin tickling his fingertips during their blessed ninety minutes of co-sleeping. Her hair soft with oils she still has from Zhaan and her face so peaceful in the lowlight that once he—on purpose—shook her awake to live out the fantasy—but Deke woke too and then that was a whole thing he had to deny.

The water starts to flow warmer than he’d like—or maybe it’s just his increase in blood pressure—among other things—and he steps out not even really bothering to towel off because in roughly two and a half hours, he’ll be breaking out.

Plans to just air dry on the bed, the big bed he can starfish on happily and maybe catch up on alternate Earth news and it sounds like a movie length dream. His ass actually hits the bed, his eyes closing before he realizes—

How the hell is he going to break out of this room?

*

Once the door opens, she’s already mid-fray, tossing guys around like sacks of potatoes, disarming guards, guns and men are clattering to the floor left and right. One guy goes to run at her, and he sort of redirects him, punching him in the face, while simultaneously tripping another—guesses the answer to the earlier question is six.

She can take out six armed guards without his help.

“What—took you—so long.” She’s full out panting now, her hair—that was in a ponytail—is falling free around her shoulders. She’s got a different gray tank top on, and what must be military workout shorts that offer her about the same coverage.

“Sorry Baby.” He stoops, collecting a concealable weapon for each of them, then plucks her hair tie off the ground, wiggling it into her palm as she leans against the wall. “I had to figure out how to get out of the room. How’d you get out so quick?”

“I—stole a—cardkey from—from the guards as we were—we were—”  Raises her hands to collect her hair, but she’s sloppy, starting to lose fine motor functions, so he steps up, collects her hair from between her cragged fingers that fall slack, and ties it up as she rests her shoulder against the wall. “You?”

“Me?” Wraps the straggling hairs around the bun he’s constructed and it’s not going to win him stylist of the year, but it will keep her cooler.

“How did you get out?”

“That. Whatever the card thing you said was.”

It’s a lie.

He used the pen—left with his desk and notepad—to jimmy the electrical panel open and mess around with the wires until the door hissed open.

“Come on.” Tries to retrace their steps, but all the damn hallways look the same and of course on a secret alien military base there’s not going to be any ‘you are here’ signs. To be honest he doesn’t even know what they’re looking for. He’ll start with a way out. 

“Where are we going?”

“We just have to make it outside.”

“Then what?”

“Then we steal a car or something.”

“And go where?”

“Jesus Honey—”

Pauses because she’s about half a hallway away still leaning into the wall, breathing just as hard and her knees are starting to knock. He backtracks, wary because if she remembers she’s angry at him, he’s likely to get one of those knockout punches to the face again and her cognition so far appears to be pretty good. She doesn’t even move, just presses the bare skin on her shoulder tighter to the metal in the wall, trying to cool herself and keeps her eyes closed. “I thought you wanted to get out of here.”

Her eye sneaks open and she curves an eyebrow at him. “And I thought you trusted these humans.”

“Yeah.” He fans her shirt a bit, allowing her a few seconds of relief. They must have made it up at least one floor, and it must be late at night because so far, he hasn’t seen another soldier except for the pile they left behind. “That was before they started separating and trying to conquer us like a game of risk.”

They weave through more of the same hallways, and after a few minutes, he slips his hand into hers because she’s trailing too far behind, her footsteps are starting to fall staggered and uneven—tripping her up—and she’s gotten too quiet.

When she stumbles into the back of him, he stops allowing her to catch as much of her breath as possible, fighting to not comfort her because that’s what she so harshly demanded.

Thankfully a sign—the first he’s seen—offers him some hope.

A stairwell sits at the end of the hallway.

As he’s deciding if she can make it up however many flights of stairs—or if he can carry her the remaining storeys she can’t—she huffs in exhaustion, “where are we going?”

Shit.

Lifts her teetering head, and she still has enough oomph to slap his hand away. They’re near the stairwell, there’s always elevators by the stairs—it sucks because it’ll be enclosed and hotter and easier to snag them, but she needs out of the heat. “Okay we gotta boogey.”

“Wait—” Her brow coarsens in confusion, her eyes squinting through the sweat resting around the bags she’s collected in the last five weeks. “What?”

Briefly holds her chin in his hand, and greedily plants a kiss on her forehead to judge her temperature—as if he even needed to. His teeth clack off each other, his jaw tenses because this just went from a farcical escape plan to a medical emergency.  “We just need to find the elevator.”

Drags her along by the wrist now, ducking his head down every hallway, serpentining through this damn mountain. Her feet slap the ground harder at his pace.

“We need to find an elephant?”

“Elevator.” That’s strike two. He stops, pivoting on his heels. The tank top she has on is too big for her, the strap tumbles over her shoulder and he tugs it back up. “How you doing?”

She yanks her arm away, stumbling back and steadying herself against the wall. He tries to find relief in her bad attitude, the grudge she can—and might—take to the grave, but at this point it’s exhausting him. “You do not need to constantly placate me like I’m some—” For a second he believes her, until her hands travel down to the back of her army green shorts and she tugs out the gun he gave to her from the waistband. “Why do I have this?”

“Oh no, no, no, no.” Yanks her along now, spinning down each hallway opening, no longer looking for surface level.

“Crichton, what—”

“We gotta get you cooler now.” What level would a cafeteria be on? Or a doctor’s office. Or just anywhere that isn’t on fire, and they knew—they must have known—acting all calm and pseudo friendly before tazing their asses—what if they have Deke? What if this is some elaborate brainfuck done by the Peace Keepers or the Scarrens or anyone because they can’t get off his ass long enough to hold up to their end of the—

“Crichton.” Manages to wrench her arm away with some reserved force, almost collapsing from using up her energy to snub him. He holds her up as two soldiers stroll by, giving him the side-eye and he just grins and nods until they pass.

“You have heat delirium, Baby.” Words against her ear. Her hot ear. Every part of her is on fire as she slumps forward, resting her head against his shoulder. His voice is almost hidden, as his lips brush against her temple. “Escape plan’s cancelled.”

In a harsh whisper she reminds, “You cannot let them know about this. They will use it to exploit us.”

His hand cups the side of her face, thumbing over the shiny layer of sweat on her cheek. “To exploit me, Aeryn.”

She seizes him with her eyes, even barely open they won’t stray from his. Before he reassures her that this isn’t her fault, that her one biological flaw doesn’t make her weak—although, it’s a pretty shitty weakness to have and their enemies exploit it left and right—someone bellows from down the hallway.

“Colonel Mitchell. Vala Mal Doran.”

There’s a guy, a big guy, hanging his head out of an elevator waving at them. He doesn’t remember the names of their doppelgangers, or ranks, or anything because he was too worried about getting his wife back to listen to half of the words falling out of General Rygel’s mouth.

“Is that us?” asks from the side of his mouth, lips barely moving.

She doesn’t answer.

So he wraps a hand around her waist, walking her almost unconscious body towards what could very well be this Earth’s version of the Terminator. The guy takes a single step—the length of the elevator—back as he shifts Aeryn in, praying she can make the few steps without collapsing.

She does, collecting herself in the corner, peeling the sweaty shirt away from where his hand plastered it to her back.

“How’s it going—” Buddy? Big Bear? Tall Boy? “Big Guy?”

Luckily the guy doesn’t send a glance his way, instead taking a step closer to Aeryn. “Vala Mal Doran you are sweating profusely. Are you suffering from heat stroke?”

When she doesn’t answer in the appropriate beat, he gives her a nudge with his bare foot, and she snaps into action. “What?” Stands straighter for a split second before sliding back down, her cheek pillowing against his shoulder. “I’m—just—tired.”

“No, no sleeping yet,” he mutters into the hair clumping on the top of her head, his hand jostles her arm, rousing her from resting.

Without turning his attention away from the elevator doors, Big Guy asks, “Is there any update on Daniel Jackson’s conference?”

“No, but I’d say he has a bad headache from prepping.”

“Why would you say that?”

“No reason, you know, Daniel Jackson.”

“Indeed. Are you heading off base to meet with Amy?”

“No, she, uh, cancelled.”

“Then where is your destination?”

“We’re actually on our way to the cafeteria because Vala left something in there. Isn’t that right, Vala?” Elbows Aeryn in the side because she’s going to have to say a word or two to make this conversation believable, but her body sort of limp noodles beside him. He flashes a tight grin at the gigantic man he realizes he’s stuck in an elevator with, and his ass kicking wife is out of commission. “Isn’t. That. Right?”

Aeryn darts awake, almost parkouring off him, kicking him against the button panel and standing, wavering, in the opposite corner. “He wants asylum. If you cannot promise me that right now, I will leave this ship.”

“Colonel Mitchell, I suspect deception concerning your intentions with Vala Mal Doran.”

Aeryn’s fit, her crazy out of context words—at least for the monumental guy taking up half the elevator—don’t seem to phase him and either this dude’s seen a lot of weird shit in his life, or this Vala chick is batshit crazy too.

The guy crunches at his hips, his hands clasped behind his back, and slowly lowers his head until they have the same eye-level. His eyes narrow and with a whisper that still sounds like a clap of thunder, he questions, “does this have to do with what you disclosed to me confidentially while inebriated?”

“What? No.” Tries to return to his wife—his very leaky, slightly crazy, almost motor function deficient wife— “She’s just a little hot and we want to go to the—”

When he tries to slip an arm around her, her hand launches up from her side clamping around his wrist, holding it in place, and her eyes are wild, jumping, dangerous, scared. “Crichton, promise me.”

He’s not going to let her die.

She’s not going to die because this is the third time something like this has happened and all it takes is a nice cool place to take the edge off. Touches his free hand to her cheek, staring into her delirious eyes, and knows he’s got to be the Bonnie again.

For her sake.

"Look, I’m not Colonel Mitchell, she’s not Vala.” The Big Guy opens his mouth, but he shakes his head. “I don’t have time to get into it right now, but she really needs to get somewhere cold. Just help her and I promise we’ll cooperate.”

The Bug Guy presses a button on the elevator and arches an eyebrow at him. “Indeed.”

* * *

They spent the next three hours staring at the long-range communication device trying to figure out where the stones went. He poked the indented grooves, Vala bounced the baby on her hip, and Chiana explained to him several times how the machine was purchased at a second-hand hut at a trading post. He rested his chin in his hand, staring—then glaring—at the device until Chiana bumped the table and it tottered while the baby blew up again.

The baby was restless. They were restless and decided to turn in.

If he only knew what that fully meant.

“This is it.” His chin juts out while he stares at a tiny bed and a tinier cradle.

“That’s it.” Chiana happily grins, maneuvering on the pads of her feet around the room to Vala who is lowering the baby into the bassinet. “They put him there sometimes, but that usually doesn’t keep him quiet.”

Vala tucks a ratty old blanket up around the kid, who is already starting to go weepy-eyed again. “Where does he sleep then.”

“With them usually.”

His stance doesn’t change, but he breaks his glare to witness a snapshot of Vala tickling at the baby’s toes and pulling a bright grin at the kid. He turns back before she notices, playing off his own grin as a smirk. “I’m still not sure I understand where they sleep.”

“Right there.”

“That’s a bed.”

“Yes.”

Vala pops up beside him, fixing the loose collar of her shirt. It immediately slides back down. Her eyebrows knit with worry as she examines the bed for the first time. “Is it possible to add another bed to this room?”

Chiana stops filing through what he can only assume are personal items and steps down from a chair. “that is two beds.”

“Oh.” Vala pouts. And he might notice her lips for the first time. Shining in the low light until her head cranes back, addressing Chiana, who is now tossing clothing into piles on the floor. “Is it possible to add a third?”

“Before they shared this room, did Crichton and Officer Sun—”

“It’s Sun,” They both correct him while Vala gravitates to the clothing pile in the middle of the room.

“Whatever.” Stretches his neck and finds the baby actually asleep, so he lowers his voice. “Did they have separate rooms before?”

“Yep.” Chiana nods and hands Vala a white shirt and some other unidentifiable black clothing. “On different levels too.”

Vala holds the clothing against her front and nods, then turns to him for approval, that big, wide grin plastered to her face. She’s adorable. They’re both adorable in an innocent but mischievous kind of way. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her mesh this well with anyone but Jackson. So instead of picking out all the reasons why clothing isn’t the biggest priority right now, he says nothing but gives her a thumbs up and a nod.

She practically vibrates with excitement and he doesn’t think his opinion ever mattered this much to anyone before.

“Alright.” Drops his thumb and points an index finger at both. “Chiana, can you take Vala to Officer Sun’s—”

“Sun.” Both cut him off again.

“Take her to her old room.”

“Fine.” Chiana leans forward, her body almost snapped in half, and smacks Vala’s scuffed boot. “I’ll show you where the refresher is too.”

“Brilliant. Perhaps you could also show me where the facilities are—”

He steps in before they can get too carried away with what might be the equivalent of an intergalactic sleepover. “Just make sure you come back for the baby.”

“What?” Vala stops just before the door, clothes spilling over one arm as the other tugs and loosens her pigtails.

“The kid.” He tries not to get distracted by the way her fingers brush through her hair, jutting a thumb back to the sleeping baby that obviously plays favorites. “You got to take him.”

Chiana’s expression sours, “he sleeps with his parents.”

“Not. You.” Curls his fingers in the air because, it is too late or too early for the who’s on first act again. “Vala, he needs to go with you.”

“Why?” She sounds almost offended.

“Because—” it’s said through terse teeth “—you’re his—”

“I’m as related to him as you are.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what?”

“You know—” she shakes her head, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to elaborate and he’s got a bad feeling about this “—he’s a baby, you’re the—”

“Oh, my dear Colonel.” She’s full out offended now. “Please do not tell me you’re suggesting I take the infant that is not biologically related to me simply because I’m a woman.”

“I—”

“I cannot believe that living on your planet has tainted your thoughts with such—”

“Dren?” Chiana chimes in.

He holds his hand against his forehead because now this all seems like a really bad fever dream and he’s going to wake up in quarantine with Lam telling him to stop drinking off-world water. “I just meant you’re better with him.”

His compliment goes in disguise as another insult. “I am not!”

“I meant that he just likes you more.”

Chiana sort of growls playfully as she takes a step forward. “The only reason the gnarl likes Aeryn more is because she actually spends time with him.”

“I’ve been caring for him for the better part of four hours.” Vala hikes up the bundle of clothing in her arms and sort of sashays to the door, Chiana following her. Before the door closes, he hears her add, “this is perfect not-father, not-son bonding time.”

And before he can even understand what the hell just happened, he’s standing in the middle of the room, clothing still all over the floor, with a bed his legs are going to hang off of, and a baby, that’s not his, staring up at him.

Deke gurgles, a wad of spit forming at the side of his mouth, and blue eyes wide, expressive in worry.

“Yeah kid. I don’t know what the hell to do with her either.” He sits on the side of the bed and it feels like it’s made of pure metal, and then tries to rationalize why he wanted to check out Vala’s ass as she left. “But she sure looks cute when she pouts.”

And that’s when Deke starts crying.

*

It has to be hours later when he finds his way down to her room, a blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders as he wanders through dark, dank hallways. It’s only by happenstance that Chiana pounces out in front of him.

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Don’t you?”

“What are you doing?”

“Chasing ghosts.” She wears a coy half-grin and he can’t tell if she’s lying or telling him the truth. Either way it’s disturbing.

“Well, as much as I would like to unpack that happy sentence, can you just tell me where Vala is so maybe we can get this kid to settle down and get some sleep?”

An entertained mewl excites her mouth, and now her smile is all cheeky. “Crichton never could stay away from her for long.”

“We’re not them.” It’s not a growl or a grumble but a deadpan statement because they don’t belong on this ship, or in this galaxy, or together. It was all a matter of coincidence, and just because she has pretty hair and what he bets are soft lips, doesn’t mean anything.

 His grandma always said to never mistake coincidences for miracles.

“In one major way, no.” She spins and starts to creep down another hallway, her cat eyes glowing in the darkness of the bulkheads. “In a lot of little ways, yes.”

*

The room is dark, but there’s a bronze undertone from the ship’s walls, or skin. The idea of being in something that’s alive is hard to understand, so he focuses on other things instead, like getting himself and Vala back to the SGC safely or trying to somehow quiet the screaming kid in his arms.

Neither of his nephews cried this much in the first ten years of their lives.

She’s dead asleep on another one of those weird metallic beds, but half of her body is hanging off the far edge, her hair’s all over the place, and the burst of white skin on her bare shoulder distracts him for a minute.

“Vala,” he whispers and doesn’t know why because he can’t hear himself. He has no clue how she’s still asleep with the baby hollering the way it is.

He takes another step forward, shifting Deke in his arms, getting glob of spit across his shoulder, and a close up of a wide, gummy mouth. Stops about a foot from her face, but her expression doesn’t change. She’s playing dead, has to be because she doesn’t want to take care of the damn kid when she’s obviously better at it—for no certain reason.

There’s no twitch in either of her eyelids, or of her fingers and when he ducks closer, she still doesn’t move.

Is she even breathing?

What if the teleportation had some adverse effect because this is her third galaxy and what if—he tucks the baby against his chest and shoots out an arm to her bare shoulder finding it icy and giving her a rough shake.

Her eyes fling open and she pushes him away with surprising ease, the whites of her eyes as identifiable in the warm darkness as the skin on her shoulder. She rubs where his hand was, blinking away the sleep, and strands of hair, folded over in tossing and turning, wave over her head. “Mitchell, what the hell?”

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, holding out the baby, who is worming, rallying his hands in the air and kicking his feet loose of the thin blanket. “But it’s been hours and he hasn’t stopped crying.”

“Hours?” Her sleep heavy mind must warp her senses because she accepts Deke without argument, twisting the kid against her so he faces out again. Her eyes are barely open, and she huffs a strand of hair away from her face as she glances at something on the wall. “It’s been twenty-three minutes.”

Finds himself just staring at how her eyelashes fan, how the baby tucks back into her even though he’s still crying, just how she’s sitting on the bed, fur blanket tumbling off her. “What?”

“Chiana taught me how to use their time measuring system.” Cradling the baby, she points across the room to a device. “I glanced to it just before I fell asleep. It’s been twenty-three minutes.”

“Well, maybe he just wanted—”

“I’m not his mother.”

“And I’m not his dad, but there’s no denying he feels more comfortable with you.”

She cocks an eyebrow at him, settling Deke against her shoulder. When she bounces him, it only makes small intervals of gasping between his cries. “Perhaps he’s not the only one who feels more comfortable with me.”

“What do you mean?”

When it becomes clear that the kid isn’t going to stop crying, she shifts on the bed, pulling the fur blanket away from the base of the bed. Her fingers pluck until the blanket around Deke comes loose, and she side-eyes him with a coy grin. “Darling, it took you twenty-three minutes to come seek me out.”

“Yeah.” Crosses his arms and raises a brow, matching her game. “Because the kid was crying, and I didn’t know what—”

“Did you even bother to check to see if—” when she leans over to see if Deke still smells baby fresh, the blanket falls off her lap in a clump and her legs are bare. She has bare legs. They’re bare and milky white even in the bronze undertone of the room.

“Vala.” He snatches the blanket off the ground and tosses it back into her lap.

“What?”

“What do you mean ‘what’?” She pauses swaddling the baby, and his chubby little legs bicycle through the air. When she doesn’t even bother giving him an arched eyebrow, he feels the need to clarify, “You thought that would be appropriate attire for the first night on a strange—”

Her raspy chuckle interrupts him, her fingers guiding down one of Deke’s arms, and then the other, to be pinned against his chest. “Please do not tell me you’re aroused by my current position, Mitchell.”

“I’m not.”

He is.

Can feel the hotness of the flush creeping into his cheeks. Deke’s arm escapes and she tucks it back under again, only giving him an all-knowing smirk and an almost eyeroll.

“I’m not,” restates, marching closer to her, but away from the blanketed end. “I’m just thinking it might not be the best idea to be running around in your skivvies—”

“I’m wearing panties—”

“Don’t—Say that word.”

She chuckles again, flipping the now burritoed baby up to rest his chin on her shoulder. He’s stopped crying and his eyes are starting to close. “Panties?”

“Don’t.”

“Panties.”

“Vala—”

“Well, perhaps if you removed yours from chafing sensitive areas of your own anatomy—”

“Stop.”

“—you’d have more fun.”

“I don’t need more fun.”

“On the contrary, my dear antiquated Colonel, rules aren’t fun.”

“They are if you’re making them.” He’s staring at the blanket now, at what’s underneath the blanket, what he knows it there. Long, pale legs that must be cold because before he rushed to cover them, he saw goosebumps on her skin. Turns before he can give it another unhealthy thought, intent on getting back to his room and alone. “I’ll drop by here in the morning to—”

“Oh no.” When he doesn’t stop marching to the door, she flings the blanket off her, scurrying after him. “No. No. No. Mitchell, we are in this together, and if we need to sleep and care for this child, we will be doing it together.”

She’s got him pinned because she’s not wearing any pants and the second he gets caught checking her out, he’s screwed. So his eyes stick to the ceiling. “Fine. Just—go put on pants or something.”

“I’ll go back under the blanket.”

“Oh no you won’t. If I’m staying here—”

“It’s not like you’ll actually fit on the bed.”

Again, another great point by his pantsless teammate. So he sits on the ground beside the bed, his head leaning back into the edge, intent on staying with her until she falls asleep and then fleeing back to the safety and weird bed in his own room.

When he glances up at her, she pulls a tight, tired smile, and slides down so her head rests just a few inches behind his on a curve of the bed, nestling Deke into the curve of her chest, and wrapping an arm protectively around him. Just before his eyes fall closed listening to the hums and groans of a living ship, she drops a second blanket into his lap. “In case you’d like to take your pants off, Darling.”

 

  



	6. Forfeit

There is a strange hum when she wakes. Moya tends to make different noises depending on the areas of space in which she travels, particularly ones with higher pressure or more stars and systems. Doesn’t open her eyes, only listens to what sounds like the constant hum of a motor. Does not chance a movement because Deke is being silent, perhaps having fallen asleep—but when she sweeps her hand softly across the bed, she finds no evidence of her son, and at that her body bolts upwards.

“Easy Baby.” Crichton’s hand lands on a blanket pulled up around her bare thigh. She’s wearing shorts, military shorts from an Earth installation. They’re in mountain. She was suffering from heat delirium.

Her son is gone.

“Deke?” Doesn’t condone the wildness etched into her voice, the unwavering pitch as she cranes her head around the room, trying to spot her child, the one with tiny fingers that curl around her own, who carries her eyes that are always free to be full of tears, and who may have her aversion to heat. Turns to Crichton, her hand falling on his forearm and allowing the unconcealed concern in her voice to adopt some hope. “Did we—?”

The calm smile slips from his face and he simply shakes his head at her. Wants to ask him if he even bothered to look, if he remembered he had a son without her conscious enough to remind him. But his hand scoops hers up, holding it tender in his own before and placing a kiss over her knuckles.

Takes relief in his proximity as he pillows her hand between his, tucking it beneath his chin, and tries not to dwell on the fact that this relaxation is the result of the complete trust of another being. Her cold skin warms between his hands, her arm peppered by his exhalations. She closes her eyes, the headache lingering from the sudden change of temperature. “What happened?”

“Well.” Shifts their hands to before his mouth, his words heating her skin as the tips of her fingers trace over his lips. “I met the biggest human-looking guy I’ve ever seen. He might have been a human, but he looked more like a Mac truck and I sort of made a deal with him.”

Her hand stiffens within his, and when she tries to tug away, he holds on. “What deal, Crichton?”

“We can talk about it later.”

Reclaims her hand, using it to push against the brown boxes beneath the blanket wrapped around her. The cold is no longer soothing and despite the irate emotions coursing through her, she finds herself lethargic, her concentration waning. “What did you offer?”

“You’re going to get upset and you need to relax—” Tries to guide her back into a laying position, but at this point if she falls back into sleep, she’ll be hard to rouse.

“I’m already upset,” speaks from between gritted and chattering teeth.

He unzips the plush jacket he’s wearing, it very thick and smooth with a fur trimmed collar. “I told them we’d work with them.”

Doesn’t offer him a remark because this is how it always ends up. He caves when someone he loves is threatened and she has to come to terms with the fact that it’s usually her that’s threatened, or the son she birthed.

Fingers tickle at her wrist, as her posture becomes precarious on the closing of her eyes.

“Aeryn.”

On his beckoning, he draws her inwards to the body heat pouring out of his open jacket zipper.

“I’m cold.”

“I know.”

“Where are we?”

“You were hard into the heat delirium, so the Big Guy brought us to the closest, coldest room.” His hand slaps down onto one of the cardboard boxes beneath her, slipping between the slatted top, and pulling out a bag full of frozen foodstuffs. “This is a freezer.”

“Do you truly believe that they will help us return to Deke?”

He guides her hands to loop around his waist, and a shiver runs through her at the welcoming furnace of heat hidden at the small of his back. “Despite everything they’ve done so far, I don’t think that they mean us any harm.”

More awake now, but more relaxed, visualizing his words, his plans that sit in constant failure. “They promised to do what they can about the heat—and honestly—” The weight of his head cushions on top of hers, feels the muscles in his jaw stretch and snap as he speaks, his hands over the bare skin on her back, fingers in her hair. “I think they just want their people back safe.”

Three solar days ago she sat on the edge of the tottering table in command, Deke lay cradled in her arms as she tries to feed him a pouch of the Peacekeeper infant formula. John hates the smell and texture of the viscous green sludge, his eloquent description of the minerals keeping their son alive. It was Deke’s feeding time and he refused to feed, only cried misery with despondent eyes lined with thick lashes, all things she made and protected and nourished within her, actions she never intended to do, actions that once brought her shame instead of pride.

Attempted to distract herself from the nascent frustrations growing within her, a squalling infant, less than an arn of sleep, the worry of where to get the next meal, and which Diagnosians to trust as despite the peace treaty, despite the wormhole generated from her husband’s mind, Scarrens and Peacekeepers alike still viewed them as a threat. Both honored the agreement, and Moya traveled safely though enemy territories until able to starburst, but the radio silence on both sides only served to stoke her concern.

Her mind exhausted and racing, her arm giving a gentle bob to her son to calm him, her voice whispering words in Sebacean, words she wished Xalax had whispered to her, sacred promises which she vowed to keep, she dipped her head, resting it against the one she created, and sighed in his scent, one she could track through the wilderness on any planet, only to have him reach and grasp her hair.

Her emotion became his emotion as she grinned at him, and he gurgled back, eyes bright and clear, and just a slight tug at his lips. John explained it was generally unheard of for a human child of only thirty solar days to have such motor skills, but it is quite common among Peacekeeper children, especially those reared upon a craft.

But she knew this action, from her son to her, was on purpose, was a reaction to her fatigue, her surrender. Knew that this was a priceless reward and when Deke still refused the food, still wailed arns on end, she remembered his fat hand in her hair, just like his father’s, and knew to be patient.

“John.”

“Yeah?”

“I want our son back.”

“Then let’s go get him.”

*  
The truce John struck up with the military offers them benefits, too many benefits to simply sit back and appreciate without the lingering suspicion that eventually these benefits will have to be reciprocated.

The doctor from before and several guards, she counts five, but keeps her head low, lest her counting be discovered, escort them back to their room. A different room this time, situated in the middle of the complex. It’s more spacious offering a bedroom separate from a communal living area, and a bathroom equipped with a soaking tub.

“Why would they give us this?” Her finger grazes over the enameled surface of the rectangle basin sunken and tiled into the floor. In its opulence she presumes there’s a more utilitarian usage.

“Because I asked for it.” He tugs out the drawers in the bathroom counter, taking stock of what was given to them. Preoccupied with simple toiletries that he took to during their last visit on a different but eerily similar Earth.

She doesn’t have the patience for his antics, despite being relocated several levels, the complex still radiates heat from within the walls, and while she’s not at a high enough temperature to be in medical danger, it’s high enough that she’s permanently unwell.

From the bathroom, the white luminescent panels on the walls and floors contrasting with the drab boulder exterior of the bedroom and living quarters, he shouts, “don’t you want to know why?”

“I’ve given up wanting to know why you do half the dren you do.” Sits atop the arm of the couch, the leather is cool, but it sweats as she does, permanently, ceaselessly. She collects her hair, ratty and dry from the few arns spent in the refrigeration unit but finds that her tie has been mislaid from her wrist. All she can do is blink her eyes closed and sigh.

A solar day ago her son was with her, she was in a room where the temperature was moderated to her liking, she was tired, and concerned, but less so that she is now. Her body adapts, it was created to adapt, to deal with harsh environments, to be pushed to extremes and then exceedingly further, to carry a hybrid offspring safely for double the gestation period. But for the first time, she fears adapting here, fears their residency becoming permanent. Fears not feeling the hold of a tiny little hand in her hair again.

Her hair is again collected, his fingers combing through to keep some semblance of a military exterior, twisting until her neck is bared and a messy ball of hair sticks out the back of her head. She vacillates between finding the same solace she did in his body warmth, the idea that he knows of her weaknesses and ensures there are routes around them and being inherently vexed that the bun on her head is now too tight, and too messy to be of use.

His lips press behind her ear, warm and wet, and when he speaks, he nuzzles into her neck. In the midst of constantly sweating, it induces a shudder. “I asked for it for you.”

“For me?” Cranes her head back, her nose brushing his cheek, smelling his perspiration, seeing the same glint on his skin.

“In case you can’t handle the heat, we can fill it with ice and let you marinate a bit.” His thumb traces the angle of her chin, his words parsing slower. “Can’t always be contaminating the frozen food section.”

Allows his hands to worm their way around her ribs, resting underneath her breasts, his exhalations are hot, but warranted. Normally would deny the idea of recreation during such a time, but she feels unmoored, on edge and perhaps the reduction of fluid levels would deliver her the calm the temperature simply will not.

The kiss is not lacking, his dry lips pulling against hers, willing her to open, to fall backward over the arm of the couch, reclining, accepting him on top of her. Normally, they fight for supremacy, their recreating boiling down to half pleasure, half sparring, seeing who will take the reigns and who will submit. On this world, in this universe, her responsibilities are numerous and overflowing. Needing to dominate him now will be one other task she must complete, so she remains reactive beneath him.

His hand slides over her stomach to her bra, similar in style to the one worn by Peacekeeper soldiers, a simple pliable black material, and his lips course over her neck, elongated for him as she bows her body back. Tugs at her bun, releasing her hair into his fingers once again, and if she wasn’t preoccupied with his hips rutting against hers, she would tell him what a frelling waste of time it was to put it up.

But instead he sucks on her shoulder, his hand strumming her breasts over the fabric, and her hands dig underneath the band of his pants, sliding along the ridge of his—

The door to their room hisses open.

As John scrambles off her, the swiftness of his movements stunted by his obvious arousal, she identifies the contour of the doctor standing within the archway.

“Is it that doctor guy? Tell me it’s not that—”

“Sorry to interrupt.” The doctor is a vibrant shade of red, his face angled towards the corner of the ceiling, refusing to make eye contact or other acknowledgement—Peacekeepers would describe this tactic as submissive and weak as direct eye contact can insight aggression. “But we need you two to take a look at the long-range communication device.”

She doesn’t answer him because she’s still not trusting of this truce. John’s jaw clicks into place, tense and tight, with his narrowed eyes, direct and aggressive. “You are just the worst.”

The doctor purses his lips and give a single nod of acknowledgement, his eyes flitting to her and lingering.  “I’ll be waiting outside.”

* * *

She wakes up almost completely frozen, her legs still tucked under the end of a heavy fur throw, but her bare shoulder practically sporting a layer of frost. Her teeth chatter as she pushes herself into a sitting position, placing herself in the right scene. On that ship, that living ship with a name that escapes her, with Mitchell still nestled at the side of her risen bed. Grins at his deep sleeping form, and the heavy snore pouring from his mouth, would have wagered that he be gone when she woke up, scurrying back to his room, and the bigger bed, leaving her on parenting duty.

The child still sleeps, a son she never birthed but has taken to her and she cannot embrace it because he is not hers. He may have her eyes, reminiscent of her most broken days holed up in a sandy-bottomed prison before the Tok’ra took pity on her, but he is not her son. Gently, she lowers him over the side of the bed, making a nest for him from the throw no longer warming her legs. Her pants, the ones she arrived in, are covered in a bit of spit up, and a little of something else from a diaper change gone awry. One that Mitchell slept through or else he has wonderful acting skills.

It’s only been about four hours since he plodded in here last night holding the baby at arms length and she’s unsure if his avoidance of the child is for her own same reasoning, trying not to see himself in a human being who means nothing, who should mean nothing, but stirs up envy and bad memories like ocean detritus.

A shower would be best.

A shower always helps, and Chiana was kind enough to show here where the facilities were. She grabs a makeshift outfit from the pile of clothes pilfered from the other room and pads her way down the bronze-hued halls until slipping into the closest communal shower. There are towels, hanging off a wall to use afterwards, and her hand slides over what should be the dial, trying to rummage through the operational instructions she was told after intergalactic jetlag and four hours of baby duty.

The water, well it’s not exactly water and she really doesn’t want to know what it is, is hot, hotter than her normal showers after off-world missions with mud caked into personal crevices, or after a tumble with a strapping soldier who followed her winks. She cleans, trying not to compare the shower to all the others she has experienced in her lifetime. Qetesh had a proclivity for hot springs, oblong baths with warbling bubbles that made her skin flush red without arousal. The showers on Ver Isca were a basin filled with heated water and were a treat to her only once a week.

With the suds rinsed from her hair, she rings it out, watching the liquid drip and run down the slanted floor to the drain. She runs a towel over her hair to catch any lingering wetness. Another towel wrapped around her as she approaches the bench in which she’s laid out her clothes, well not her clothes, other hers clothes. A white top, leather pants, and suspenders. The undergarments are more rudimentary black and white and made of stretchy nylon or a similar material. Nothing flashy or lacey or sensual, garments used for basic needs. Misses her frills, her bows, her lace. Pink with brown stripes and all the trimmings that men love to fuss over, like unwrapping a gift. Has to keep it interesting because after three years stuck in the same mountain, sex with an alien isn’t exactly the draw it once was.

There’s a noise outside the doorway, and she assumes it’s Mitchell panicking while being left alone with a child he was all for adopting before he knew it was his, well not his, but alternate his. She rolls her eyes because men, nothing scares them more than sexually progressive women or babies. Qetesh ruled entire Jaffa armies while wearing next to nothing, pushed herself on men until they quaked in her presence, championed men in the battlefield and in bed, and all because her strength, her confidence, loomed over their own.

Is unsure why babies and the birthing process frightens men so much, she was on path to work as a midwife before being hijacked by Qetesh, and there’s nothing more natural. Perhaps it’s the time discrepancy or the bodily fluids or one of so many other reasons. Would frequently tell Tomin of her changing body, her weakening bladder, milk laden breasts, the marks cut across her stomach from lack of give in her skin, and he would silence her and tell her it was inappropriate talk.

Tugs on the panties to below her hips, her fingers sliding over the craggy white scars still carved into her skin from a baby that was never her own. Pulls on the bra adjusting herself accordingly and finding it a bit of a tight fit. Knows her counterpart has had a baby and can only guess this garment was from before that time.

Pulls on the loose-fitting white top, and yanks on the leather pants which she doesn’t care for, but there’s not much in the way of alternate clothing. Digging through that pile, the majority was black and leather. No frills, no bows, no pop of color. Fits the suspenders over her shoulders and finds them relatively useless, the pants fit fine, particularly in the hips, and her hypothesis of this being an older outfit is proving itself truer and truer.

Slides her feet back onto her combat boots and imagines her counterpart, Officer Sun, doing the same back on base. Perusing her limited wardrobe of three shirts and one pair of pants, and no boots now because she took them. Feels bad leaving her with next to nothing, but perhaps the SGC will treat her a smidge better, offering her other uniforms. Perhaps she’ll get the use of the civilian clothing that she hardly ever gets to wear. Hopes she wears the blue frilly shirt, the one that kind of rides up under the arms and works it in for her.

With still moist hair, she opens the shower room door expecting to find an irate Mitchell, which is partly the reason she took her time, but instead finds a new person. A shorter, older woman, about the height of Chiana, with a third eye in the center of her forehead and the biggest ears she’s ever seen.

“Oh Aeryn, I wanted to inquire if the food I—made—for—” Her words peter out as the woman stares at her, examining her, perhaps with the third eye. “You’re not Aeryn.”

“Yes—Yes I am.” Bursts by the old lady still sniffing around her like one of those slobbering Tau’ri animals Cameron keeps on his farm, the ones with spastic tails and floppy ears. He named his Misty and said she was a good girl. “I just—the child spat up on me, and when I went to offer him a new diaper, decided to relieve himself on the legs of the pants I pulled back on because that room is so dreadfully cold and—”

When she turns to judge whether her lies are believable, the old woman blows a handful of dust in her face and everything goes black.

*

Awakens with heavy cuffs eating up her hands and wrists. They must be magnetized as her arms are pinned above her head, and when she struggles to yank them down, she cannot. As her blurred vision clarifies, she witnesses the old woman puttering around what must be a kitchen, adding bits and bobs to a pot cooking on the stove.

When the old woman turns, catching sight of her conscious, she throws a hand to her chest and releases a weak laugh. “Good, you’re awake. I was afraid I’d used too much of the fyang powder. Aeryn requires a high dose and I was unsure to how similar you are.”

She swallows, blinking her eyes, her head lowering a bit, the effects of the drugs obviously still present in her system. “I believe we only look similar—”

“—Yes. Yes, outwardly you appear exactly alike, perfect precision in copies, however interiorly you differ vastly, which is how I was able to suss you out.” She putters still, extending on the tips of her toes to grab a red piece of twine from a high cabinet and tossing it into the mixture.  

“I don’t know if Chiana informed you—” The woman doesn’t pay attention, throwing three of something into a canister and shaking it like a primitive instrument. It results in high pitched squealing, and the noise gives her a rotten feeling in her tummy. “I mean no harm.”

“Yes Dear, I’m quite aware of your benign nature.” Sidling up next to the pot, the woman dumps the content of the shaker into the boiling water, and the screeches become more potent before dying out.

“Excellent, then perhaps you’d be kind enough to release me?” Shoves her body back into the metal bulkhead, causing a thunking sound from her weight.

“I will do so in just a few microts.”

She pouts her lips, now hanging the full weight of her body from her arms, her head difficult to keep up. “I realize you’re quite busy creating whatever fantastic concoction you’ve got brewing, but is there anyway we can expedite my releasing?”

The old woman pours the boiling liquid from the pot filling a small bowl to the brim. Little tendrils of smoke rise from the mixture, bubbles popping, but slowing. “You can be released just as soon as the mixture cools.”

“Lovely.” While finding this old woman agreeable, the small portion of her that is lucid, warns that perhaps she’s too agreeable. “May I ask why?”

“Oh,” the woman glances up from where she sweeps a bit of dust off the counter with her hand and pockets it. “Because you need to ingest it.”

“Okay.” Glances to the bowl that is no longer throwing steam into the air, and she swallows harshly. Is never one to turn down a meal, a good meal, a bad meal, has lived off roots and grubs before she trotted to Earth, all done up in leather gear to hide her boney figure. “Again, may I ask, why?”

The old woman only laughs, collecting reeds strewn around the room and placing them back into a vase. “Because you’re all done up.”

“I’m aware of that.” Eyes roll upwards, witnessing the metal consuming and restricting her hands. Can’t hold the pose for long and her head lolls back down. “I’d just assumed you’d done it.”

“No. No. No.” The old woman tuts with a wag of her finger, just like any village elder, just like any older relative, just like General Landry. She approaches with a smile, but her third eye opens, revealing a bright green glow. “You are empty, and there was no consent given.”

“I’m not sure I—”

The woman drifts closer, the eye shine no longer calming, but growing intense, almost radiating heat. “Aeryn’s was natural, biological from heritage, from birthright.”

“All right. Perhaps you should go get—”

“Yours is unnatural. Not for betterment. You were kindling, just a sacrifice.” The old woman shakes her head, empathising with her over a statement she doesn’t understand, a trait she’s unsure she actually has. Her eye closes, retreating into furrows on lilac skin, before she turns away, shuffling towards the bowl.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.” Feels her heart speed up as the old woman clasps the bowl between her two hands, the liquid inside cooling to a thick paste, bright red with frozen ripples. She really doesn’t want to ingest the concoction. She has minor food allergies, and her stomach is already roiling from the lack of fresh fruit available. Bartering won’t work because she has nothing the woman wants, but perhaps exploiting her good nature, her nonsensical words, will work. “But I don’t want to eat that, and if you make me, it will be unnatural and not bettering.”

“No, no, no.” Tuts again, a mischievous half-grin tugging on her worn lips. “It will better you, it will undo what was done—”

“Well perhaps I don’t want—”

The old woman balances the bowl in a single, steady hand, placing a cold palm against her cheek. Her grin turns warm, her eyes as gentle as her touch. “Your body has always been forfeited, Child.”

The words strike her harder than any fist ever has, and she manages to hold her head steady enough to stare at this woman, while unpacking such a heavy sentence, one she tries not to admit to herself.

“This mixture will help you reclaim it.”

Before she has time to ask another question or even consider drinking a solution she saw made up of screaming nodes and common kitchen rubbish, the woman clamps a hand over her nose, blocking her nostrils, and when she opens her mouth in protest, the bowl tips back against her lips.

The thick, sticky, fowl liquid trips back over her tongue, coating her throat, making it hard of her to breathe, like the time she ordered extra extra cheese on her pizza, against Daniel’s behest, and a wad of melted cheese got stuck in her throat until Muscles smacked her back so hard, she saw stars.

Can’t breathe, can’t cough, and the bowl clatters to the ground as the old woman forces her mouth closed with both cold, thin-skinned hands. Her breaths are staccato against he woman’s fingers as she weaves a lullaby of soft, supportive words while keeping her mouth clamped with unbridled strength.

“There, there. Keep it all down.” The still warm smile, the still tender hands, and it’s oddly familiar. Comforting while being in intense fear caused by said comforter. The holding down, the hair stroking, the Goa’uld burrowing into the back of her neck. Tears prick the corners of her eyes as she shakes her head, flailing her feet, trying to knock the woman away, her throat thick and full, her mouth dry and tasting of refuse. “You must ingest it all of it.”

She swallows the lump of what she’s trying to trick her brain into thinking is cheese, just as the old woman is flung aside, back against the cabinets, shaking the utensils and cupboard doors. Her head dizzying, white lights, bright colors spackling across her view as she coughs, trying to bring up the mixture that sits hard in her stomach, like swallowing a boulder, but as she hacks, strangles out whooping coughs, her throat remains empty and her stomach full.


End file.
